58 replies to this topic

[DogUnderTree]

Just curious about the degree of connection. It gave me a platform to expand imagination, look to the future, think about the possibilities of technology. What about you?

[AdamDavis]

Good poll, DogUnderTree! I myself am a very big fan. One of the many aspects of Star Trek that appeal to me are the designs of the starships, particularly the Federation vessels...the whole primary hull/secondary hull/nacelles thing (and even some unique designs).

[stephen]

MINI REVIEW TIME!

Farscape: ***** out of 5
Brilliant from beginning to end. Exceptional cast with perfect chemistry. Takes a while to get over the muppets, but has some of the most well-written storylines of any TV show ever made.

Firefly: **** out of 5
Well-written characters, decent plot. Witty dialogue. Sympathetic towards a libertarian / anarchist perspective.

Stargate SG1: *** out of 5
Started out exceptionally... good cast, solid concept. Died out around S5 as politics / internal maneuverings trumped exploration storylines.

Star Trek TNG: *** out of 5
The best of the Star Trek series, in my opinion. Inventive yet simple storylines, average characters. Q is awesome. A solid first exposure to the genre.

Battlestar Galactica: ** out of 5
Great special effects, high production values, decent plots lines. Hated all the characters. Not a single one was likeable. Strong fascist / nationalistic / luddite themes.

Stargate Atlantis: ** out of 5
See Battlestar Galactica. Is this a recent trend? No likeable characters, strong authority structure. Top-down leadership.

[Shepard]

DS9 - Best of them all, as much as I hate to admit it.
TOS - Shatner is a god.
TNG, Voyager, Enterprise...in that order.

I was never a fan of the Stargates, and I never watched Farscape. Firefly was awesome, though. I like the new Battlestar Galactica, too.

[Live Forever]

I liked TNG about the best, and DS9 as a close second. The thing holding DS9 back was that they couldn't move around every week like you can if the whole show is on a ship, so they had to focus more on "soap opera" type stories a lot.

Never really could get into Enterprise or Voyager, but I watched them a little. TOS was alright, but the special effects just doesn't hold up well to time (imo, not as well as Star Wars or something), and that first movie was a real stinker, but I have to give mad props to James T. Kirk and the storylines were generally very good.

[emerson]

I watched it on a fairly regular basis, up to and excluding enterprise. Which is funny in a way, given that it tends to be pretty universally opposed to any technology which alters the genetics or nature of humans.

That, and the humanoid forehead "aliens" which acted like humans with slightly exaggerated interests or emotions was a continued annoyance for me.

[AdamDavis]

and that first movie was a real stinker

Oh, I loved The Motion Picture, I thought it was one of the best Trek feature films. Jerry Goldsmith's score was beautiful, it was intelligent, the pace of the film did not bother me. I liked it...

DS9 was good: it had great political intrigue, the Dominion storyline was great and it was alot darker when compared to the others. To be honest, I liked all of the series'. Although the whole Trek canon has countless continuity errors.

[sdxl]

I don't like Star Trek or related series at all. All that technology and still no visible hair on captain Pickard's head. [huh]

[AdamDavis]

Pickard's

*Picard

Well, in Encounter At Farpoint (TNG), there is a cameo from Dr. McCoy, who is in his 130s...so at least life extension is remotely an issue somewhere in the Star Trek canon.

[Shepard]

McCoy is still alive in the books, too. (at ~150)

The movies have a weird leap to them, the even numbered ones, on a whole, are much better than the odd numbered ones. Although, I'd put the first in the top five.

[DJS]

I'm insulted by this poll. As if all of us Immortalists are lame treky geeks!

Yeah, I watch Star Trek.

TNG [thumb] [thumb]
TOS [thumb] [thumb]
VOY [thumb] [thumb]

Firefly was pretty good too.

[nihilist]

i loved star trek tng.

picard has so much class, and data was pretty awesome too. and of course the women were hot.

farscape seemed to lose me as time went on. i remember loving the first season or 2.

DS9 was pretty good, but not as good IMO as TNG.

[advancedatheist]

Stargate Atlantis: ** out of 5
See Battlestar Galactica.  Is this a recent trend?  No likeable characters, strong authority structure.  Top-down leadership.

I don't understand SGA's treatment of the physicist character, Rodney McKay. On the one hand he comes across as weak and cowardly, almost as bad as Doctor Smith on Lost in Space. Yet on the other hand he usually finds the neat hack that solves the episode's problem.

At least SG-1 has consistently treated its physicist character, Samantha Carter, with dignity.

[advancedatheist]

I've noticed from watching science fiction television over the years that apparently in the future, everyone sounds either Canadian, British, Commonwealth (South African, Australian or Kiwi) or Californian. Apparently the entertainment industry has decided that science fiction doesn't work if you show other kinds of accents, like those of blue-collar New Yorkers, for example.

Star Trek Enterprise diverged from the trend somewhat by having a character who sounded like a cracker.

[Brainbox]

Star trek (I'm not a fan), has a positive-ethical view on the future that I like.

[AdamDavis]

As if all of us Immortalists are lame trekky geeks!

Some of us are anyway [thumb] . However I must admit that, like alot of other Pop Culture media, it could have been so much better from my point of view. I still love it. I think the very first pilot episode, "The Cage" starring Jeffrey Hunter as the Captain was absolutely fantastic. It makes me think what could have been. But unfortunately the TV company thought it was too cerebral for most audiences, and they did not like the idea of having a female as Number One. It is very unfortunate, perhaps if they did approve of The Cage, it would have been alot more revolutionary than it already is had it gone that direction. In some cases, it is rather nice to use your imagination to make a particular canon like Star Trek to fit your own preferences (for instance, disregard episodes one deems to be bad as not canon and others that are very good as canon).

Alright! Who chose "I dislike it to some extent"... [:o] !? Show yourself! [tung]

[whovian222]

Battlestar Galactica: ** out of 5
Great special effects, high production values, decent plots lines. Hated all the characters. Not a single one was likeable. Strong fascist / nationalistic / luddite themes.

Are you talking about the new one? If you are I can't imagine a view being more off base! Fascism? When did that happen? I've seen the entire series to the end of season 2 and there wasn't any "fascism" in it. The people on the show seem to be trying to preserve a democratic goverment the best they can. I think you just think anybody with views to the right of you own are "fascist". Luddite? Because there mistrustful of technology? Why would they be, I mean it just resulted in the deaths of 20 billion people so I just do get where that could be coming from! Are you really this simple minded or did I just catch you on a bad day?

[Anne]

I can't remember ever NOT having heard of Star Trek. I'm pretty sure I knew who Captain Kirk was by the age of two. My dad was quite the nerd himself in a lot of ways (I take after him, can you tell? ), so sci-fi was never in short supply around our house. When TNG came out I remember being a bit skeptical since I was already accustomed to the original cast (I was a rather curmudgeonly 8-year-old back in 1987!) but eventually I came to like that series better. There were a lot of very interesting ethical issues explored, and for a series that started in the 80s, there were plenty of neat-looking effects! My favorite episodes were always the ones where the crew encountered some sort of Temporal Anomaly or Highly Localized Distortions of the Spacetime Continuum.

I didn't get much into DS9 and only watched about 3 episodes of Voyager. I've still never seen an episode of "Enterprise". But I'll always have a special place in my brain for TOS and TNG, particularly TNG.

I was also quite the Star Wars fan growing up but I would term that more "science fantasy".

As for later series, I like Stargate SG-1 quite a lot (interesting concepts, quite a pro-technology bent) but haven't seen Atlantis yet. I REALLY liked Firefly and was quite annoyed that it was so short! One thing that made me happy about that particular series was that there was no sound in space.

[quadclops]

I'm a huge fan of Trek! Some of the most memorable episodes for me were the ones that featured immortal super-beings.

[>] Metrons

[>] Organians

[>] Trelane

[>] Apollo

[>] Sargon

[>] Gary Mitchell

[AdamDavis]

Here is an article about the electoacoustic instrument called the Blaster Beam that was used for V'Ger's leitmotif in the soundtrack to The Motion Picture.

[advancedatheist]

I'm a huge fan of Trek!  Some of the most memorable episodes for me were the ones that featured immortal super-beings.

[>] Metrons

[>] Organians

[>] Trelane

[>] Apollo

[>] Sargon

[>] Gary Mitchell

The original Trek portrays negligible senescence in humans as a bad thing, however:

http://en.wikipedia....s...(Star_Trek)

http://en.wikipedia....i_(TOS_episode)

http://en.wikipedia......irls_Made_Of?

http://en.wikipedia......8TOS_episode)

Towards the end of the last named episode, "Requiem for Methuselah," Spock, McCoy and Kirk express relief that the really old human "Flint" will eventually age and die.

[Live Forever]

http://www.imminst.o...&f=9&t=9380&hl=

For those that hadn't seen that Star Trek thread before, I thought some people may be interested in it as well.

[Live Forever]

Full map of the United Federation of Planets:
http://alderflats.co...bums/LJ/ahe.jpg
killer..

[John_Ventureville]

This is a fun thread. I am a definite Trekkie (never liked the term "Trekker", lol) and my favorite series was a toss-up between Next Generation and DS9. What I loved about Deep Space was that the final season was essentially WWII set among the stars! You can't go wrong with Federation, Klingon and Romulan fleets forming an alliance to tear into a mutual enemy. : ) And the Cardassians really deserved the humiliation they received after all the years of degrading the Bajorans (do I come through as a fan or what? lol).

I would be curious to find out what Gene Roddenberry's views were on human immortality. He may have seen it as something which would cause humanity to stagnate. But I don't know. The two major godlike and immortal races he had were the noble Organians and also the manipulative Q. I wonder if he envisioned the Federation in time evolving into something on par with one of these great peoples.

It seems to me the fantastic SF series everyone has forgotten is "Babylon 5." In some ways I view it as superior to Star Trek, I respected it that much. I really liked the plotline of the encroaching alien "Shadows" and how the Earth government became utterly corrupted. A great cast with terrific writing, special effects (for the time and considering their budget) and an overarching storyline. Harlan Ellison holds writer/producer J. Michael Straczynski in extremely high regard because of the hell he witnessed Straczynski go through due to budget cuts and other horrible interruptions. But despite all of that the final product was on average quite excellent.

John : )

[modelcadet]

I was always a huge fan of TNG. I felt it best explored philosophical issues, though at times was too pedantic. I agree with John also about Babylon 5! I was going to mention that show.

I had a conversation with a friend relatively recently about how ridiculous certain aspects of sci-fi shows are. For instance, the fact that in the StarTrek universe the Federation has the technological capability to completely eliminate wants (the holodecks, fabricators, etc), yet will engage in 20th century-style wars over tracts of space... (also, that races could even remotely compete with one another in these space battles).

Of course Trek's a product of the past and a work of fiction, so I'll suspend my disbelief (especially about Patrick Stewart's beautiful bald head).

[John_Ventureville]

My problem with the Federation is that every so often they either invent or discover essentially Singularity spawning technology but they then just sit on it! lol There must be a very statist elite in Starfleet and the Federation which absolutely do not want people having indefinite lifespans, vastly improved bodies, super godlike AI, advanced nanotech, etc. And they must have counterparts among the Romulans and Klingons. The Dominion had just borderline Singularity technologies and they nearly clobbered a combined Alpha Quandrant alliance!

I can imagine wars over tracts of space even among highly advanced races but I admit that in the "real universe" one race would probably be eons more technologically advanced than the other and there would not be much of a fight. But in the Star Trek universe they explain all this by saying their was a progenitor race and that all the major races are actually related to each other and got their starts at roughly the same time. The Vulcans could have been the technologically dominating "super-race" but they spent too many millennia engaging in bloody civil wars due to their out of control physical passions. But they eventually got it under control.

Hey, don't get me started about baldness in the future! It could be a "fashion statement." Yep (think of the sexy Deltans)! But I understand what you mean...

John : )

[Live Forever]

3 words: Seven of Nine



That's what I'm talking about.

Edited by Live Forever, 30 May 2007 - 09:31 PM.

[JohnDoe1234]

Exactly Nate...

[Shannon Vyff]

loved Star Trek as a child, it is too slow for me now... but it made me think of a much larger universe and future... got me into cryonics even

[advancedatheist]

The Stargate franchise has worked while the Trek franchise has faltered because it shows people from our time and culture having transhuman experiences. Trek just never wanted to "go there." The SG-1 series also premiered on cable at a propitious time, during the summer of 1997 when a lot of adults had to learn how to use unfamiliar information technologies like the Web. The Stargate under Cheyenne Mountain acted like a physical analogue to the web browser, where you had to enter "addresses" through a computer to open connections to other worlds. Only when things went wrong, you didn't have technical support to call upon for help; you had to figure out how to fix things yourself.