OOC Discussion

For the Trek fans.

http://kck.st/1xc0Bwr

They're going to break the bank by x6 by the end of the pledging. I just hope they get some attention and get the ball rolling on something more "forward" in the timeline of the franchise.

I'm a backer, where's my cookie?

Martok is a Starfleet Captain now.

I couldn't agree more Rory. Every time I see something like this all I can do is shake my head at the prevailing idea amongst the powers-that-be that main line Star Trek is out of gas.

No cookies from me. Take it up with the Axanar folks.

So, i just watched the ending of Voyager. I had lost motivation for the series some months ago, but now STO is reviving it for it's second expansion and i wanted to be up to speed by the time that happened. Also, i've lost patience with Breaking Bad.

You know it was funny that the point i'd broken off was just before i would've started really enjoying this series. It's also pretty sad that it took till the latter half of S6. Arch mentioned somewhere that at some point late in the show, Kate Mulgrew put her foot down against continuing to play her character like she was schizophrenic. I've had worse words to describe Janeway with, but i'll take that mild term in appreciation for her effort, which, i'm rather happy to say, i thought paid off real well. It makes me wish Kate had put that foot down much earlier, cause i would've enjoyed the series immensely more if Janeway had always carried herself like she started to somewhere in Season 6.

Better late than never, i guess. Was still on time for me to start liking her character. Still would love to cross to some alternate universe where they decided to cast Michael Ironside as the Captain, but i'll take my hat off to Miss Mulgrew. She really did a good job turning her character around, and i can accept her as the lead character now, something i couldn't possibly envision a few months ago, when i had lost interest in the show.

Still, there's something i just have to rip to shreds as viciously as i can muster right now. This ship is traveling 7 years trying to reach home, and the ending is "Psyche, we're home. Bye!". Picard had the decency to get down to the crew quarters and join his officers for poker. DS9 had like half an episode of denouement, to send off every character the right way. Voyager has about 60 seconds, and then BOOM, credits.

I mean, really? This is the sendoff the writers had planned? After they'd pulled off the amazing feat of turning those characters into something that's actually memorable, they just shove it all off in under a minute?

I mean, if that had been the penultimate episode, that would've been fine. Have Voyager ride off into the atmosphere, and then have a whole last episode of them just returning to their families, Tom meeting B'Elanna's father and reuniting with his own old man, Harry trying to keep his mom away from Janeway, 7 finally meeting her aunt face to face and take back her real name, Doctor Joe meeting his brethren. These aren't things better left to the viewers' imagination, dear writers; these things were the payoff to the promise the characters were living by pretty much since the show started, not to mention pretty much the sum total of whatever overarching plot managed to hold itself together since the most exciting premise in Star Trek history got hacked and mutilated from S1E2 onwards.

But no no no no, we couldn't have thrown away any of those problem-of-the-week stories to make room for anything actually meaningful that doesn't involve techno-quantum-babble now, could we? I mean, silly me. What is this, DS9?

Well, at least STO will be mending that by bringing back much of the cast, but if Annika hasn't at least grown enough to go by her own name yet, i'll be so angry i might even write another angry post about it.

They were going for more of an action movie ending. Notice they let Janeway's Crowning Moment of Awesome carry them out of the series rather than the characters themselves.

I mean, if the characters were never important before why should they be now? Other than the Doctor, it's not like anyone got much character development. They were just a bunch of story McGuffins stuck on a Federation ship which was in turn stuck in the Delta Quadrant.

This post convinced me to never watch that show. I just don't have time to watch something passable when there are other shows, games or novels that are a lot better.

When you say STO, do you mean Star Trek Online? How exactly are they mending a show with an MMO? I don't understand what's going on here.

Star Trek Online is the only media right now that is pushing the mainline timeline forward (there might be books but I'd never read them so I don't consider them a thing).

Zeiss wrote:This post convinced me to never watch that show. I just don't have time to watch something passable when there are other shows, games or novels that are a lot better.

Yep. Totally agree there Zeiss.

The books actively avoid maintaining continuity (as they always have) so they can do their own thing.  By contrast the writers at STO work very hard to make the story not only retain continuity (both big and small... if there's a plot line or a race from an episode that was never mentioned again, it's a safe bet that it's in STO somewhere) but also make that continuity make a lot of sense.  Or to put it bluntly, STO is actually continuing the Star Trek story.  Certain people (myself included) keep waiting for some idiot to come along and announce a new Star Trek show or whatever that throws that out the window and then it'll suck, meaning fans will continue to point to STO as the real continuity (see the Star Wars Canon Stupidity for another example of this type of thing).

Well, i wouldn't say the characters were unimportant to the story by design, so much as writer incompetence (much as i loathe to disparage individuals i never met for the combined product i saw at the end, but hey, SOMEONE was at fault for that mess). The characters were MEANT to be important, as i'm sure pretty much every non-sociopathic work of fiction strives for, they just failed at being so. At least for most of the series.

I once asked Arch what was a good point to start watching Voyager at (i.e. when it stopped sucking), and he told me at about S3. Well, i won't say i hated the show at that point, but i only started really liking it at around mid-season 6 (about the time Janeway started to grow up). Still, it was a good time. Could have been better, and i still think it's unacceptable that it wasn't, considering the premise it worked off of, but i could sit down and enjoy those 40 minutes.

And please guys, out of all the things i could try to convince you not to like, out of my own disgruntled opinion, Voyager isn't really deserving of my success there. The show does have it's good points, especially after the characters start becoming... you know, characters. It just took a loooong time for me to warm up to it. And besides, you know how Arch says i hate everything he likes, so my opinion could be biased. Really, don't take my critique as the determining factor on whether you'll enjoy this show or not. If anything, i liked it enough to get annoyed at it for it's flaws, and not many shows manage to get me that interested.

I mean geez-louise, it's not like i ever convinced you guys to like Knights of Sidonia or Treme. I don't really take any pride in being an influence for people to hate things.

You don't need to try and defend Voyager, K.

Voyager is full of good and bad, and is not for everyone, like every tv series out there. But in order to enjoy it, most people I know say it takes a long time. There's PLENTY of other series that do a better job at entertaining.

We only have so much time in our hands, so might as well skip those series that take WAY too long to get to the good stuff. Entertainment/Time ratio is actually important, man.

Essoje wrote:You don't need to try and defend Voyager, K.

It weirds me out to no end, how i got there.

We all went there at least once in our lives man, not need to feel weirded out about it.

It's like me and FFMQ. I couldn't for the live of me defend it for it's flaws if it was any other game, but it's so freaking relaxing that I end up forgiving it and enjoy myself... until I kill the final boss by healing it. THEN ALL BETS ARE OFF!!! ... but then I realize for some reason FFMQ has the upper ground and it tells me that, so now I'm like freaking Anakin Skywaker and we all know how that ends. *le sigh*

Don't worry K. Arch's reviews of the Voyager episodes already did a good job of keeping me away from the series. Your post just made me sure that I wouldn't even try it.

But I'll still watch Arch's series on Voyager, as strange as it may sound. I can't wait for him to get to Farscape though. :p

Dammit Jim, I'm a critic, not an apologetic!

Whatever, I'm one of the people waiting for a new, forward-in-time show that can skip ahead all of the non-canon mess or ignore it at the very least and bring the show back to people who just don't dig the MMO scene.

Great sound! Lyrics catchy! Much humor! Wow!

My favorite part is where they are riding the horses who are in turn riding the motorcycles.

I like all the art references featured as graffiti on the alley walls. You can see Arin's chin-face. at 1 minute in.

Yeah, those were great too.

I've run out of interesting series to keep me centered while i work, so i've turned to documentaries for a while.

You guys ever heard of the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor?

I'll bite. No I haven't. What is it?

(Normally I'd just Google it but for the sake of conversation I'll hold off)

A type of nuclear reactor that was developed in the 50s (thereabouts), by Alvin M. Weinberg, but corporate imbecility stopped from becoming the mainstay in power production. The proof of concept had been successfully made, but the project had it's funding cut, and was shoved in the drawer, until it was revived in the past few years.

Compared to a standard BWR, it's insanely more fuel efficient (99% of the liquid thorium fuel is used, as opposed to the 0.07% of the solid enriched uranium used in current models), and uses an element that's found pretty much everywhere on Earth, as opposed to uranium-235, which is about as rare as a precious metal.

It's able to enter cold shutdown without any outside intervention (the liquid fuel design makes the whole shutdown process entirely passive, so no danger of meltown), even though it works at much higher temperatures than a BWR.

Top it off, some of the fission biproducts it makes are extremely valuable and rare. Among them are Plutonium-238, which is what they used in deep space probe batteries until we ran out of the stuff (like, on the planet); Molybdenum-99 and Bismuth-213, both with medical applications, the latter of which being able to treat leukemia.

There's a company over there called Flibe Energy, that's working on developing the technology for deployment, and the Chinese are apparently pretty serious about making it the mainstay of their nuclear program (power production only, as the material can't be viably weaponized).

The way they presented it, it makes it look like another industrial revolution. And it could have been here a generation sooner, by the look of it.

Thank you human greed/stupidity for screwing things up. Go China.

*sigh*