Star Trek - Space: The Final Frontier

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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.

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"

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".

Braga should have listened to his gut instead of caving to the executives IMO, though it's nice to know even he regretted not doing that.

However, "Tomorrow is Yesterday" didn't entirely suck in concept, being a "what if one of the UFOs Man thought he saw was real and it was actually us from the future", not to mention firmly established the "slingshot around the sun" time travel method. And while it was kind of so-so at worst if you ask me, it did lay the groundwork for some of the better episodes that revisited contemporary Earth later on.

"Assignment: Earth", on the other hand, yeah, hard to defend that one. Roddenberry shamelessly made it a plug for another series if Star Trek went down the toilet and little else. However, it is somewhat redeemed in the novels, where Gary Seven gets fleshed out quite a bit and plays a part of the Eugenics Wars series that does its best to make sense of that backstory detail.

As for the Nazi two-parter, I personally tend to forgive that one because it was an obvious attempt to put the TCW crap behind them. It still sucked, but they were trying to kill the malignant TCW tumor off for good. It didn't work all that well, but in their defense the TCW nonsense was so convoluted I can't think of a better alternative.
 
Braga should have listened to his gut instead of caving to the executives IMO, though it's nice to know even he regretted not doing that.

Braga gets a lot of shit, mind you for good reasons. He helped run that iteration of Trek into the ground, only a few years after it was a cultural smash hit and apparently he's a reprehensible asshole (or was, he's apparently constantly apologizing for his behavior back in the 90s). But he's not a terrible writer. I mean he wrote some great stuff in TNG. I think the power he got after TNG went to his head and the executive meddling that existed in Voyager and Enterprise chaffed him as well. That's just my take anyway.

However, "Tomorrow is Yesterday" didn't entirely suck in concept, being a "what if one of the UFOs Man thought he saw was real and it was actually us from the future", not to mention firmly established the "slingshot around the sun" time travel method. And while it was kind of so-so at worst if you ask me, it did lay the groundwork for some of the better episodes that revisited contemporary Earth later on.

Calling it a stinker may be too harsh. I've only begun to rediscover TOS, the last time I watched it was five or so years ago on a local LA channel with my brother. Now with the magic of Netflix, I get to binge it. I saw it just yesterday and it was, well, eh? I didn't understand how transporting the two guys made them lose their memory or if they were going back in time with the clocks going backwards, why werent they also going backwards? I also think the concept of "what if UFOs were real" was done a lot better in DS9's "LIttle Green Men". Now that's an awesome episode. Funnier too.

Star Trek IV to me is a better take. That movie gets some heat for being too cheesy and comedic, but I love it. And this may be some sort of geek heresy, but I think I like "All Our Yesteryears" more than "City On The Edge Of Forever"


"Assignment: Earth", on the other hand, yeah, hard to defend that one. Roddenberry shamelessly made it a plug for another series if Star Trek went down the toilet and little else. However, it is somewhat redeemed in the novels, where Gary Seven gets fleshed out quite a bit and plays a part of the Eugenics Wars series that does its best to make sense of that backstory detail.

I didn't know the character was ever revisited in novels? I know there's a comic book series of him that came out recently, and that he was considered for an appearance in AbramsTrek (for whatever reason). I do know it was meant to be a pilot for a different series, which eventually became "The Quester Tapes". I also didn't know the character had anything to do with the Eugenics Wars.

As for the Nazi two-parter, I personally tend to forgive that one because it was an obvious attempt to put the TCW crap behind them. It still sucked, but they were trying to kill the malignant TCW tumor off for good. It didn't work all that well, but in their defense the TCW nonsense was so convoluted I can't think of a better alternative.

Yeah TCW ends with pretty much no resolution. Though I imagine the two parter is also a throwback to the Nazi aliens of the original series.

Since the Mirror Universe two parter is technically time travel related, I count that as a good episode involving time travel in Enterprise. Then again, the episode "Twilight" isnt bad either, even if its just trying to be "Yesterdays Enterprise"
 
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Braga gets a lot of shit, mind you for good reasons. He helped run that iteration of Trek into the ground, only a few years after it was a cultural smash hit and apparently he's a reprehensible asshole (or was, he's apparently constantly apologizing for his behavior back in the 90s). But he's not a terrible writer. I mean he wrote some great stuff in TNG. I think the power he got after TNG went to his head and the executive meddling that existed in Voyager and Enterprise chaffed him as well. That's just my take anyway.
Another problem with Braga is he wrote too much. He has over a hundred writing credits on Star Trek. Granted, those are split over several different shows and films and some of them are only story credits, but that's more writing credits than J. Michael Straczynski has on Babylon 5, and he wrote two seasons of that show solo and one other season mostly solo. As SFDebris put it, the guy couldn't go to the toilet without shitting out a Star Trek script.
 
I also think the concept of "what if UFOs were real" was done a lot better in DS9's "LIttle Green Men". Now that's an awesome episode. Funnier too.
And it had Duke Phillips.
I do know it was meant to be a pilot for a different series, which eventually became "The Quester Tapes".
Questor Tapes was a different Gene pilot. Assignment Earth was a pilot for Assignment Earth.
iirc Questor was about an android who got woken up and searched for info about his creator as he discovered his place in the world and sense of identity. Basically proto-Data.
 
iirc Questor was about an android who got woken up and searched for info about his creator as he discovered his place in the world and sense of identity. Basically proto-Data.

I actually never saw it or heard about it. The YouTube channel "Trekspertise" said its what became of Assignment Earth so I took their word for it

Another problem with Braga is he wrote too much. He has over a hundred writing credits on Star Trek. Granted, those are split over several different shows and films and some of them are only story credits, but that's more writing credits than J. Michael Straczynski has on Babylon 5, and he wrote two seasons of that show solo and one other season mostly solo. As SFDebris put it, the guy couldn't go to the toilet without shitting out a Star Trek script.

This is all true, but I'm more forgiving than most toward him, mainly because he wrote many of my favorite Trek stories. Some of them with Ron Moore, whos a better writer than he is, but still. I think Pre-Voyager Braga was overall an asset to Trek, of course after TNG not so much.

It's kind of like my feelings toward Gene Roddenberry. Much of the criticism he gets is deserved, but he did create the franchise. A lot criticize him for being a main reason early TNG sucked, but he's also response for the series being made in the first place. The original idea for a new Trek show was some retarded academy show with characters literally saying "gee wiz!", something he thankfully killed.

Edit: Skimming through Wikipedia, Questor Tapes does somewhat resemble Assignment: Earth, just the aliens leave androids to protect Earth, instead of descendants of kidnapped humans.
 
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And just to throw this out randomly, I read somewhere that in its very early origins, Star Trek was intendfed to be a steampunk show set on a flying airship. I wonder if that's true

Also, I like reading about the various retcons and concepts in Trek that never got fleshed out. Like the Eugenics Wars, the Post-Atomic Horror (though I think later TNG era Trek retconned it away?), the ban on genetic engineering, the Earth-Romulan War, stuff like that. Trek's a goldmine of cool ideas, hence why a flat-out reboot I always felt was just a sign of a lack of creativity.
 
Generations is a wholly forgettable movie.
The only part I remember from it at all was the beginning when they were on a boat.. I don't know if I fell asleep after that or just don't remember.

I'm going to try convincing my friend to watch another movie tonight. One I haven't seen or don't remember seeing recently, so probably either III, V or Insurrection or Nemesis. Wish me luck guys.

Edit: re. Enterprise, one thing that really bothers me is how Archer is a total dick to Daniels. That just seemed really unwarranted.

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.
End of Eternity by Issac Asimov deals with this
 
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Well we ended up watching Spock's Brain instead. I think it was worse than Threshold even. But it was at least bad in a really funny way. I died every time they said "Spock's brain," or the girl didn't know what a brain was, or they dramatically fell over, it'd make a good drinking game.
 
So Star Trek Into Darkness. It's a really blue movie. I mean wow, everything feels fucking blue. Aside from that though, it's not as bad as the 2009 one. It's pretty much a dumb action movie that shits on Khan by making him an action supervillain. That's probably the worst part of the movie for me. At one point Spock says Khan wants to kill every being he finds inferior, but wasn't the original Khan the most peaceful tyrant in the Eugenics Wars? If I remember, he didn't have anybody going around murdering people because they were inferior. I remember Kirk and McCoy having a conversation about how they admired him a little in Space Seed. It's kind of weird that Spock says that in the first place considering that he got all this information from Ambassador Spock. So did Spock just forget his history or some shit? They could've just picked another warlord out of their asses and the movie would have been much better for it. Also Khan being white is dumb as fuck. I'm usually not one to complain about this shit, but the Pumpkinpatch (or whatever his name is) is white as hell and he's called Khan Noonien Singh.
Kirk dying in the same situation as Spock in Wrath of Khan was also dumb. And then Spock just yells Khan. And then Kirk is cured by magic blood. So fucking bad.
I guess I disliked it more than I thought. Still better than First Contact as an action movie though. I also wasn't falling asleep like during Generations or Insurrection so that's good(?).
 
So Star Trek Into Darkness. It's a really blue movie. I mean wow, everything feels fucking blue. Aside from that though, it's not as bad as the 2009 one. It's pretty much a dumb action movie that shits on Khan by making him an action supervillain. That's probably the worst part of the movie for me. At one point Spock says Khan wants to kill every being he finds inferior, but wasn't the original Khan the most peaceful tyrant in the Eugenics Wars? If I remember, he didn't have anybody going around murdering people because they were inferior. I remember Kirk and McCoy having a conversation about how they admired him a little in Space Seed. It's kind of weird that Spock says that in the first place considering that he got all this information from Ambassador Spock. So did Spock just forget his history or some shit? They could've just picked another warlord out of their asses and the movie would have been much better for it. Also Khan being white is dumb as fuck. I'm usually not one to complain about this shit, but the Pumpkinpatch (or whatever his name is) is white as hell and he's called Khan Noonien Singh.
Kirk dying in the same situation as Spock in Wrath of Khan was also dumb. And then Spock just yells Khan. And then Kirk is cured by magic blood. So fucking bad.
I guess I disliked it more than I thought. Still better than First Contact as an action movie though. I also wasn't falling asleep like during Generations or Insurrection so that's good(?).

Gonna have to disagree and hand First Contact the crown on that one, mostly because the Borg are appropriately creepy and menacing enough to make for a convincing threat and the logic used in that movie was completely consistent throughout with what we know of their capabilities and intentions, while Into Darkness had a ton of plot holes and bastardized the entire point behind Khan.

They also made Picard a more believable "action hero" in that movie because they played him up as a Captain Ahab figure, which, considering he was formerly assimilated and clearly hated every moment of it, gave him the perfect and logical motivation to want to kill them dead.

Into Darkness bastardized everything the original Khan was all about, who was also given a Captain Ahab like motivation in Star Trek II, but at that point it actually made perfect sense, while Into Darkness gave him a ludicrously complex background story and shit on the very idea of eugenics being an evil superscience in Star Trek's entire canon history by making Khan's blood a literal elixir of life, a plot twist that ranks right up there with "Spock's Brain" and "Threshold" as peak stupid in Star Trek format.
 
Into Darkness is better as an action movie because that's all it is. It's just action scene after action scene with little substance (I'm not a big fan of action movies). so he's not wrong there.
 
Into Darkness is better as an action movie because that's all it is. It's just action scene after action scene with little substance (I'm not a big fan of action movies). so he's not wrong there.

Noted. Guess my autistic inner Trekkie resents it too much for pissing on what it tried to do a reboot of to enjoy it.
 
Gonna have to disagree and hand First Contact the crown on that one, mostly because the Borg are appropriately creepy and menacing enough to make for a convincing threat and the logic used in that movie was completely consistent throughout with what we know of their capabilities and intentions, while Into Darkness had a ton of plot holes and bastardized the entire point behind Khan.

They also made Picard a more believable "action hero" in that movie because they played him up as a Captain Ahab figure, which, considering he was formerly assimilated and clearly hated every moment of it, gave him the perfect and logical motivation to want to kill them dead.

Into Darkness bastardized everything the original Khan was all about, who was also given a Captain Ahab like motivation in Star Trek II, but at that point it actually made perfect sense, while Into Darkness gave him a ludicrously complex background story and shit on the very idea of eugenics being an evil superscience in Star Trek's entire canon history by making Khan's blood a literal elixir of life, a plot twist that ranks right up there with "Spock's Brain" and "Threshold" as peak stupid in Star Trek format.
I dunno if the Borg were particularly menacing in First Contact. Their first appearances in TNG were pretty creepy because you got the feeling that they were so advanced that they pretty much completely disregarded humans as a threat so seeing these cyborgs walk past their "adversaries" casually was intimidating as fuck. But First Contact opens up with the Borg getting absolutely shit. Then they continue to ignore people. Like fuck, maybe after getting your ass beaten 2-3 times you'd start to consider humans a threat? It's really dumb how they just stand around while people ruin their work. Best example of this is when they were fucking with the deflector dish. There were like 5-6 Borg working on the deflector and they could have easily fucked up Picard and Co. But instead they wait until one of them does a bad thing and then slowly walk over to them to kill them. It's goofy as fuck. If I remember Picard even jumps over one. Makes even less sense since their """collective""" intelligence has a central intelligence (Queen) that can just order the Borg to fucking kill every crew member or cyborg their shit up. So dumb and boring.
I also think Picard was the exact opposite of believable. What happened to that Family episode where Picard came to terms with his abduction by the Borg? What about the episode I, Borg where Picard puts his feelings to the side in order to help a Borg drone become a real person? He could have killed them all then. And that somewhat boring two-parter that I forget the name of with Data, Lore, and Hugh? Nah, let's have him go fucking APESHIT. BOOM BOOM Borg BAD! Past character development BAD! Picard thinking BAD! Picard shoot big Borg with Tommy Gun GOOD! About as bad as nu-Khan in my eyes, maybe a little worse. At least Khan has the genetic engineering/background to be an action star, Picard is a balding old man that has preached pacifism and understanding for about 7 seasons.
In the end though they're both shit Trek movies. It's just that I can enjoy one a lot more than the other.

Edit: I forgot to mention that nu-Klingons look FUCKING STUPID. Dammit JJ you hack, stick to the original fucking designs.

Also I forgot to mention that I found out that Scott Bakula is the lead of Quantum Leap. I used to watch that shit all the time as a kid. Too bad they didn't just rip off the basic idea of Quantum Leap and put that in Enterprise instead of the Temporal Cold War shit. That would have actually been really fun. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of an episode about Archer somehow being flung back in time in the middle of some social issue to set history right so he can go back to his time. Fits pretty well into Trek in my opinion.
 
I dunno if the Borg were particularly menacing in First Contact. Their first appearances in TNG were pretty creepy because you got the feeling that they were so advanced that they pretty much completely disregarded humans as a threat so seeing these cyborgs walk past their "adversaries" casually was intimidating as fuck. But First Contact opens up with the Borg getting absolutely shit. Then they continue to ignore people. Like fuck, maybe after getting your ass beaten 2-3 times you'd start to consider humans a threat? It's really dumb how they just stand around while people ruin their work. Best example of this is when they were fucking with the deflector dish. There were like 5-6 Borg working on the deflector and they could have easily fucked up Picard and Co. But instead they wait until one of them does a bad thing and then slowly walk over to them to kill them. It's goofy as fuck. If I remember Picard even jumps over one. Makes even less sense since their """collective""" intelligence has a central intelligence (Queen) that can just order the Borg to fucking kill every crew member or cyborg their shit up. So dumb and boring.
I also think Picard was the exact opposite of believable. What happened to that Family episode where Picard came to terms with his abduction by the Borg? What about the episode I, Borg where Picard puts his feelings to the side in order to help a Borg drone become a real person? He could have killed them all then. And that somewhat boring two-parter that I forget the name of with Data, Lore, and Hugh? Nah, let's have him go fucking APESHIT. BOOM BOOM Borg BAD! Past character development BAD! Picard thinking BAD! Picard shoot big Borg with Tommy Gun GOOD! About as bad as nu-Khan in my eyes, maybe a little worse. At least Khan has the genetic engineering/background to be an action star, Picard is a balding old man that has preached pacifism and understanding for about 7 seasons.
In the end though they're both shit Trek movies. It's just that I can enjoy one a lot more than the other.

Edit: I forgot to mention that nu-Klingons look FUCKING STUPID. Dammit JJ you hack, stick to the original fucking designs.

Also I forgot to mention that I found out that Scott Bakula is the lead of Quantum Leap. I used to watch that shit all the time as a kid. Too bad they didn't just rip off the basic idea of Quantum Leap and put that in Enterprise instead of the Temporal Cold War shit. That would have actually been really fun. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of an episode about Archer somehow being flung back in time in the middle of some social issue to set history right so he can go back to his time. Fits pretty well into Trek in my opinion.

Gonna have to disagree a little on Picard. He came to terms with what happened to him as something he had to accept as reality, even accepted Hugh and hoped returning him would would be an even nastier way to screw over the Borg than a simple virus, so he still wanted revenge, he just hoped he could do it in a way that would salve his own conscience, which, as we found out in "Descent" (the two parter with Lore), didn't pan out very well, returning Picard to square one.

And as established, Picard never really was able to separate himself from the Borg completely (which Voyager would later emphasize with Seven), and Picard's family had died by this point, so his living moral anchor that helped him past his first brush with his dark side is gone now, and since he's been through the Dominion War at this point, Picard's not half as naive or pacifistic as he used to be, so when the Borg come back and he has to prevent them from retroactively Borging all of human history, all the crap he accepted happened but never found complete closure with is now flung back in his face and made even more personal, and the novels fleshed out that little callout from Lily Sloane he got for hiding behind his high and mighty Federation morals as a cover for the fact he never really abandoned his lust for revenge, he just deluded himself into denying his motivations were as base and violent as they really were all along and that he kept pretending to himself he would eventually put the Borg behind him in a way he hoped would let him look in the mirror for the rest of his life but never did.

As for the movie, the Borg were pretty dumb, but in their defense, their Queen wanted Picard to Locutus himself again and even was fixated on winning Data over too, so due to her not keeping a close eye on the other Borg and making sure they were in 'kill and/or assimilate first and ask questions later" mode the whole time, their apparent stupidity makes some sense, and by this point, as later novels would clarify, the Borg were still trying to convince humanity to just lie down and submit (later novels had the Borg come to the realization they needed to take off the kid gloves and stop fucking around), and at least half their mission was to neutralize and or assimilate the Enterprise and Picard into their forces once again, and it's arguable their trying to convert the Enterprise into a homing beacon for the other Borg was Plan A with the other half being Plan B.

I agree it does seem kinda stupid regardless, but I still prefer First Contact because there is a lot less inconsistent bullshit I'd have to hand wave away to enjoy it.

The new Klingon designs are pretty retarded, no debate from me on that one, and damned near anything would make more sense than the Temporal Cold War crap.
 
Into Darkness is heartbreaking for me because the first half is so damn good. The exact point where the movie flies off the rails is where they bring Khan back to the ship. You can thank Damon Lindeloff for that - the man who can write a fantastic beginning, but can't write an ending to save his life (see Lost, Prometheus, Tomorrowland etc).
 
Into Darkness is heartbreaking for me because the first half is so damn good. The exact point where the movie flies off the rails is where they bring Khan back to the ship. You can thank Damon Lindeloff for that - the man who can write a fantastic beginning, but can't write an ending to save his life (see Lost, Prometheus, Tomorrowland etc).
I didn't really care for the beginning. Sure it was leagues better than the rest of the film, but it never stood out to me as being amazing. The opening scene of the film is BOOM BOOM VOLCANO wow Kirk you fucking created a religion around your ship. Really dumb stuff. Including parking the Enterprise underwater. I didn't get the point of that. If they didn't park it underwater, they would have never been found out and Kirk probably wouldn't have had to get an earful. The conflict between Kirk and Spock is kind of dumb too. Did Kirk really think Spock was going to fabricate some bullshit to cover their asses? And why didn't Spock tell Kirk about his report? I liked Pike though. I think nu-Star Trek handled Pike a lot better than The Menagerie. Would've been nice if he passed on something useful to Spock during the mind meld though instead of getting probed while he died. Thought that was weird as fuck, Spock deciding to do a mind meld all of the sudden for no reason.
 
Even the future after the TNG era with access to other galaxies (and even time travel) could've worked too.

Agreed

Into Darkness is heartbreaking for me because the first half is so damn good. The exact point where the movie flies off the rails is where they bring Khan back to the ship. You can thank Damon Lindeloff for that - the man who can write a fantastic beginning, but can't write an ending to save his life (see Lost, Prometheus, Tomorrowland etc).

I know I'm one of those annoying Trek fans who dislikes AbramsTrek entirely, but I don't honestly absolutely hate them. However Into Darkness is probably my favorite of the trilogy, but it's still a bad film, from start to finish. The worst one probably is the first, and the most boring, forgettable is Beyond.

The only part I remember from it at all was the beginning when they were on a boat.. I don't know if I fell asleep after that or just don't remember.

I don't hate Generations as much as everyone else. I love the Enterprise crash scene and some of the fan servicey scenes with Picard and Kirk. I also like seeing the Enterprise D, inside and out, on the big screen with a budget. Overall it's not a good film, but I think its just eh then horrible.

As for First Contact, I've seen the criticisms of Picard acting out of character that makes me stratch my head. Beyond him wanting to infect the Borg with a virus in "I, Borg" and only declining because Hugh stopped being a Borg, he even said it was the wrong thing to do in "Descent". I also don't remember Picard being a pacifist, he and the crew killed people all the time on the show, and I think he's at his best in the film. Regardless, I find First Contact a more satisfying conclusion to "The Best Of Both Worlds" for Picard than either of those two episodes. It's early genesis originates with the desire to revisit "The Best Of Both Worlds" as one of the time shifts in "All Good Things", and see Picards reaction to that, which probably would have been awesome.

Also some of the criticisms above are due to production and don't bother me. Like the six or so Borg on the deflector was originally supposed to be dozens of Borg crawling all over the area. The change doesn't bother me at all and seems like a nitpick. I also love the redesigns of the Borg and even the Borg Queen. I just think its a pretty solid follow-up to "The Best Of Both Worlds" But anyway, I love the film and never get most of the criticisms, and think its far superior to the Abrams shitburgers, but then again even Nemesis IMO is superior to those.

Also I forgot to mention that I found out that Scott Bakula is the lead of Quantum Leap. I used to watch that shit all the time as a kid. Too bad they didn't just rip off the basic idea of Quantum Leap and put that in Enterprise instead of the Temporal Cold War shit. That would have actually been really fun. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of an episode about Archer somehow being flung back in time in the middle of some social issue to set history right so he can go back to his time. Fits pretty well into Trek in my opinion.

That sounds like a terrible idea, lol. Kind of reminds me of the original Enterprise finale idea, which makes what we got actually good in comparison.

Fun fact: Star Trek already sorta ripped off Quantum Leap in the TNG episode "Parallels" (one of my fav episodes) with "quantum realities" and how Worf shifts, and there was in fact another episode planned in the sixth season where Picard and Co. find themselves in Romulan bodies which was only canned for being too similar to Quantum Leap.
 
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