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vanvelding · 7 months

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I'm going to say one of the nicest things I can about a show about Star Trek: Lower Decks

They played us like a string quartet.

(Spoilers for 4x09: "The Inner Fight")

Lower Decks was sold a Star Trek/Rick & Morty mashup from the start. The first scene is a drunken Mariner literally harming her sidekick, Boimler. It practically screamed, "Mariner & Boimler a hundred tours! Double-u, double-u, double-u dot Mariner and boimler dot com!"

But of course, it also had Star Trek references. One of the earliest is "Who would win in a fight? Khan or Roga Danar?" Why would anyone else in The Federation know or care who Roga Danar is? And there's no imagination on display for the oldest referential paradigm, "Who would win in a fight?" Lazy. Bullshit.

Of course before the end of season one, Lower Decks showed us it was more than that. Boimler was gaining the kind of experience he needed. The story hinted very strongly that Mariner had been in Starfleet a LONG time. She wasn't a omnicompotent mary sue; she was a Commander with her own philosophy/trauma that compelled her to remain an Ensign.

It was a good show and it stood on its own. The references were used well to create interesting stories ("Twovix"), as part of the setting ("Hear All, Trust Nothing"), or just as a gag here and there ("Kayshon, His Eyes Open" and, like a dozen others). The references to the setting become the background radiation, remarkable in how deep a cut they really are (Vendorians?). I've described it to many people as "Star Trek, but everyone has watched Star Trek."

What it wasn't, was related to its namesake. "Lower Decks" was a surprisingly heavy episode about the younger members of the Enterprise crew and their perspective on the missions of galactic import that the viewer usually enjoys an omnisicent view of.

Lower Decks mentions our main cast don't have that omniscient view, but Mariner is a stone-cold badass, Rutherford was part of a secret effort to develop artificial intelligence, Tendi is the Mistress of the Winter Constellations, and Boimler--actually Biomler is no more exceptional than any other Starfleet officer.

So when we get our main cast and the senior officers into a room and they mention Nick Locarno, our thought is, "LOL, another reference. This one from TNG. Not particularly deep. LOL, Boimler is a Beverly Crusher fanboy. I guess it makes sense, they have the character model from the episode with Tom Paris. Clearly, Robert Duncan McNeil is happy to do some voice work. We'll probably make a reference to how much he looks like Tom Paris.

"lol"

Look, if you figured it out then pat yourself on the back. Me? I filed away another reference. I didn't realize that Nick Locarno was connected to the episode of TNG that was this entire series' namesake. The characters even say, "Who?" which is one of the first times they don't get a Star Trek reference. Because Nick Locarno isn't a part of the Star Trek universe they view with an enthusiastic fandomness; it's part of their dramatic history, whether they know it or not.

"ha-ha, I guess Nick Locarno is too deep a cut for the show that called back to Morgan fucking Bateson."

But whatever, A-plot/B-plot. Gags about Starfleet habitually rolling up to seedy establishments in uniforms while looking for information, which is subverted by Captain Freeman being fucking genre savvy (also, wasn't she going to be promoted before getting arrested at the end of season two? I guess getting framed for a crime was deemed to be not very 'admiral-able'). Mariner ends up in a cave with a Klingon taking shelter from a crystal rain.

The pieces are there. Mariner was an ensign during The Dominion War. Two to three years before The Dominion War, Wesley Crusher left Starfleet, our Nick Locarno expy Tom Paris was recruited to Voyager, and Sito Jaxa was an ensign.

And Nick Locarno is in play.

We could have figured it out! We're in the narrative and emotional third act of this series (Tendi gave us the "We'll always be friends" speech last week)! Everyone regular just sat in a room trying to figure out how to help Mariner; we were one fruit salad analogy away from an intervention with Dr. Migleemoo!

Mariner escapes from Cardassian interrogation chambers for fun!

But Locarno is just another TNG reference, like Beverly Crusher. Background radiation. The season's story arc is something original to Lower Decks, which it's proven it's unafraid to do at this point. The series has no relation to "Lower Decks"

And then they fucking hit us with it; Beckett Mariner knew Sito Jaxa. They were friends. Then Jaxa died.

That's Mariner's trauma (that and The Dominion War).

And I didn't see it because I came to see Lower Decks as a series that stood on its own merits as a show while calling back to earlier Treks in a light, non-committal way. And I credit that solely to the writing of the show which leveraged both of those qualities to make an entertaining show that I like before, but now respect.

Just amazing stuff.

#star trek #star trek lower decks #star trek lwd #lower decks #lower decks spoilers #star trek lwd spoilers

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curator-on-ao3 · 2 months

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Again, cool response to the last question, so I'll let you pick from these options:

And there are things I have fan-fixed in my head to the point that I have to remind myself that the fix-it isn’t part of the actual canon: favourite one of these?

Your/a favourite part of actual canon. Like, maybe something little but it's just so lovely and fitting to you and you're just happy that it exists?

I’ve been a little down on Trek lately, so I’m going to type as fast as I can to brain-dump, in show order, the first things that pop into my mind that I absolutely love in Trek canon:

Kirk calling Nomad his son, the doctor

Christine Chapel’s snark to Roger Korby about schtupping the androids

Mark Leonard’s performance in Balance of Terror

the Horta (a great mama)

“Edith Keeler must die.”

Captain John Christopher, United States Air Force. Serial number 4857932.

Tribbles

the lesson of The Cloud Minders that we must have empathy and listen to others when they tell us about their lived experience in an environment unlike our own

the cheap-ass animation of TAS

Bynars and Minuet

Beverly Crusher’s frustration in Arsenal of Freedom (and the episode’s Good Ship Lollipop joke)

Picard shooting the other version of himself in Time Squared (to clarify: out of respect for those times when we have to stop ourselves from getting caught in loops/doing stupid stuff and we summon up the courage to break a bad cycle and move forward)

K'Ehleyr

Picard out-lawyering the Sheliak

Rachel Garrett; Yar and Castillo

Lal (but I can’t watch the end anymore, it hurts too much)

the Shakespeare and “Set a course for Betazed. Warp 9.” comedy in Ménage a Troi

Best of Both Worlds, I and II (Shelby inclusive)

every conference table discussion in all of TNG

Beverly’s jump in Remember Me (such a damn good episode)

the reveal in Future Imperfect (which one? all of them)

The Dancing Doctor tap dancing with Data

Darmok. And Jalad. At Tenagra.

Ro Laren

Troi saying, “You could have easily been right” to Ro in Disaster

Hugh, Third of Five

the fact that The Next Phase has so many plotholes and they’re forgivable because the episode is so fun and great

Scotty on the holodeck version of the TOS bridge and Picard joining him

Rascals!

Deanna’s “Ancient West” outfit

the Jefferies tube music and make out session in Lessons

Attached. Oh, my heart.

the Enterprise with three nacelles … and that absolutely perfect last shot of the series

“You exist here.”

Sisko’s casual, everyday affection for Jake

“Old Man”

Rejoined. Lenara Khan. The love. That kiss. The emotional stakes. All of it.

the three Ferengi hitting their own heads to try to fix their universal translators so the 20th century Earth military people mimic the movement to try to communicate

every second of Trials and Tribble-ations including Sisko working overtime to stop fuckmaster Dax, tossing the tribbles, Sisko meeting Kirk, “We do not discuss it with outsiders,” and so much more

Kira blaming Bashir for putting the baby inside her when … you know … behind the scenes

The Sons of Mogh helping with the harvest in Children of Time

Far Beyond the Stars — some of the best if not the best science fiction I have ever seen

the monster fakeout (and kindness) in The Sound of Her Voice, even though the end makes me cry

“Computer, erase that entire personal log.”

Solok

Sisko and Kassidy discussing their comfort levels about a simulation in which the reality was segregation

Janeway waterfalling off the sofa to be closer to Mark on the screen

“Warp particles!”

the lizard babies

the two Janeways in Deadlock

Remember (a painfully good Holocaust episode that doesn’t get enough credit and, yes, I know the path the script took and I’m glad it ended up as a B’Elanna episode)

“I don't know what I'm seeking.” “Then I believe you are ready to begin.”

“The child you spoke of, the girl. Her favorite color was red.” Also, Tuvok’s meditation lamp in the window for Kes.

hot damn, Counterpoint, yaaas

everything in Relativity

“The Yankees, in six games.”

Janeway going after Seven in The Voyager Conspiracy

“This is Lieutenant Reginald Barclay at Starfleet Command.” “It's good to hear your voice, Lieutenant. We've been waiting a long time for this moment.” “The feeling is mutual. Unfortunately, the micro-wormhole is collapsing. We have only a few moments.” “Understood. We are transmitting our ship's logs, crew reports, and navigational records to you now.” “Acknowledged. And we're sending you data on some new hyper-subspace technology. We're hoping eventually to use it to keep in regular contact, and we're including some recommended modifications for your comm system.” “We'll implement them as soon as possible.” “There's someone else here who would also like to say something.” “This is Admiral Paris.” “Hello, sir.” “How are your people holding up?” “Very well. They're an exemplary crew, your son included.” “Tell him, tell him I miss him. And I'm proud of him.” “He heard you, Admiral.” “The wormhole is collapsing.” “I want you all to know we're doing everything we can to bring you home.” “We appreciate it, sir. Keep a docking bay open for us.”

“Nice hair.” (Live Fast and Prosper)

Janeway and Jaffen in Workforce

the spot-on legal concerns of Author, Author

“Set a course. For home.”

(Nothing from Enterprise or Prodigy only because I haven’t watched enough of Enterprise or any of Prodigy)

Burnham and Georgiou forming the delta with their footsteps

the CGI on only the shields protecting Burnham from space

“Are we in session? Because I didn't know you were practicing again. Because if I have your undivided attention for fifty minutes, I can think of a whole bunch of other things we could be doing.”

“That's as depressing a trait as I've ever heard.” “I don't give a damn … I still don't give a damn.”

Cornwell beaming in, phaser aimed, taking command of Discovery

Cornwell phasering the fortune cookies

Cornwell’s voice breaking: “So my Gabriel is dead.”

Detmer’s little bounce when Emperor-as-Captain Georgiou takes command

Pike beaming aboard and instantly being all like MOJAVE to prove to the audience he’s the guy from The Cage

New Eden. Everything. Oh my God (pun intended). The visuals. Owo’s backstory. Pollard patching Pike up after he’s shot. The light at the end. Oh my God, yes. That episode. Yes.

Number freaking One beaming aboard and having her lunch briefing with Pike (Chris and Una’s decades-long friendship wasn’t canon yet, but it shows here so beautifully)

Gabrielle Burnham

“In case the shit hit the fan.”

Michael Burnham on truth serum

Book

Laira Rillak, everyone!

Q&A

season 1 Raffi Musiker

Fleet Admiral and Commander-in-Chief Kirsten Clancy

“You owe me a ship, Picard.”

“You need a feather in your hat.”

Riker greeting Picard

Hugh greeting Picard

the separate trio of Raffi, Clancy, and Deanna all telling Picard he’s shit

Rios singing in Spanish

President Annika Hansen

everybody finding each other in the Confederation Universe

Liam Shaw — a character with incredible highs and lows

Majel Barrett as the computer voice when the crew gets to the Enterprise D

“Somehow I figured you might.”

everything in Ghosts of Illyria

Spock and La’an’s mind meld

Spock and T’Pring in Spock Amok

“You cannot resign. The loss to Enterprise would be unimaginable. To me.”

“If you’re going to steal a starship, do it correctly.”

Neera Ketoul

La’an normalizing needing to eat all the time as a teenager (especially important for girls to hear)

Pike and Una visually checking in with each other so often that it’s in their cartoon versions (that whole episode, actually, including, “Riker!”)

That’s scrolling through episode titles and jotting down stuff I love off the top of my head, fam.✨

Thank you so much for this ask, anon! ❤️ I needed this positive energy in my life.

#i love asks #things i love in trek canon #an incomplete list #i’m sure i’ll think of something else the minute i post #thank you so so much for leading my thoughts this way #anon

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staringdownabarrel · 7 months

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hey, where do I start with star trek?

It really depends on whether you want to watch all of it or if you're mostly hoping to do a bare bones viewing of the older shows before you see the shows currently in production. There's a lot of viewing guides out there if you want to do a completionist viewing, so I'm going to answer this with the assumption you want to do the latter.

Before I begin, I'm not really sure if there's such a thing as a non-contentious version of this list, so keep in mind there's going to be different people with different opinions and some are going to take some pretty big issues with this one.

The Original Series: The Cage, Where No Man Has Gone Before, Mudd's Women, Balance of Terror, Arena, The Menagerie Pts. I and II, Errand of Mercy, Amok Time, Mirror Mirror, I Mudd, The Trouble With Tribbles, Journey to Babel, The Enterprise Incident, Spock's Brain

The Animated Series: Honestly, I'm probably going to get some flack for this one, but you can safely skip it entirely

The Next Generation (the best series): Encounter At Farpoint, The Battle, Hide and Q, Datalore, Skin of Evil, Conspiracy, The Neutral Zone, Elementary Dear Data, The Measure of a Man (I have issues with this episode but it is very popular regardless), Q Who, The Emissary, Peak Performance, Who Watches the Watchers, Yesterday's Enterprise, The Offspring, Sins of the Father, Tin Man, Transfigurations, The Best of Both Worlds Pts. I and II, Family, Brothers, Reunion, The Drumhead, The Mind's Eye, Redemption Pts. I and II, Ensign Ro, Reunification Pts. I and II, I Borg, Chain of Command Pts. I and II, Tapestry, Birthright Pts. I and II, Rightful Heir, Descent Pts. I and II, The Pegasus, All Good Things

Deep Space Nine: Honestly, just watch the entire thing. A lot of the episodes, even the earlier ones, end up tying into ongoing arcs in this show. If you want just one episode to sell you on it, go see Duet or the Past Tense two parter.

Voyager: Caretaker, Jetrel, Threshold (c'mon, it's one of the holidays), Death Wish, Tuvix (notoriously one of the most contentious episodes of any Star Trek show ever made), The Q and the Grey, Worst Case Scenario, Scorpion Pts. I and II, The Gift, Year of Hell Pts I and II, Message In A Bottle, The Killing Game Pts. I and II, Living Witness, Drone, Equinox Pts. I and II, Q2, Author Author (aka what TNG's The Measure of a Man could have been like if it was good), Endgame.

Enterprise: Broken Bow, The Andorian Incident, Shadows of P'Jem, Shockwave Pts. I and II, Carbon Creek, Minefield, Cease Fire, The Expanse, all of season three because it's a season long arc and honestly one of the better seasons, Storm Front Pts. I and II, Borderland, Cold Station 12, The Augments, Babel One, United, The Aenar, Affliction, Divergence, In A Mirror Darkly Pts. I and II, Demons, Terra Prime, These Are the Voyages (also a contentious episode)

#star trek

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v-e-l-v-e-t-g-o-l-d-m-i-n-e · 1 year

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You know, the thing that pisses me off the most about the Enterprise finale is not Trip's terrible death, or that the crew doesn't even have a proper POV during their finale episode. Sure, these things makes me very angry, but the one thing that makes me see red, you know what it is?

It's the presumption that if the franchise were to be given a goodbye to a not known lenght of time, the ones who had to send it off had to be the TNG crew and none of the other series deserved this honor, as if the other ones - even the Enterprise crew, the one show doing the goodbye - were not worth it.

I'm having a similar feeling watching the third season of Star Trek: Picard, considering they wrote off the entire cast of the series, with the exception of Raffi and Seven. It does feel like once again the TNG crew is kicking out the cast of the original show to insert themselves in there at the end.

But it's not the same because it's a Picard series and Picard was the main TNG character!

Yes, I see this point, somewhat agree with it but. It's not the same. Because this is Picard twenty years after his captain years, and it's about who he is now. We saw him make new friends, a new family in the two previous seasons, and this is now all cast out, as if it was all worthless.

And you see, I'm not actually against the inclusion of the TNG crew in Picard's last season. I think it makes sense to include them; they are Picard's family, after all, and Nemesis left several loose ends. What I'm against is the exclusion of the original cast, when they should have been kept IN ADDITION to the TNG crew being brought back.

But it's too many characters to write about!

Deep Space Nine had NINE main characters (Sisko, Dax, Kira, Bashir, Odo, O'Brien, Quark, Jake, Worf), three main antagonists (Dukat, Winn, Female Founder) and a TON of supporting cast (Garak, Damar, Leeta, Rom, Nog, Morn, Keiko, Kasidy, Ziyal, Martok, Weyoun, Vic Fontaine...) and they managed to juggle it all just fine. More than fine.

But they have to work with much less episodes!

I see this point. It's true; only ten episodes it's not a lot of time when there used to be 26 episodes per season, but you know what? It's still a body of work with almost ten hours of duration. This is just a little less than the hours of the LOTR trilogy, and see the size of the universe and the storylines you're capable of creating with roughly the same timeframe.

If they focused on what matters and if they were to write it well, it is more than possible to juggle many characters and do a good work while you are at it.

Elnor should have been in this season; he could be a foil to Jack, since he sees Picard as a father figure. So should have been Soji, especially now that Data is back; I think he deserves to know he has a daughter. They never should have gotten ridden of Rios. Borg Queen Agnes is very plot relevant, but she's nowhere to be seen.

I'm glad that Raffi has been in this season and its a joy to see her with Worf, but it leaves such a bitter taste in my mouth that her romance with Seven seems dead to me. Trek has a terrible record with queer characters, and Seven and Raffi are the first lesbian couple in the whole franchise (and the only main ones apart of Jennifer and Mariner in Lower Decks), and even if they had highs and lows, at least season two bothered to give them time together and interactions. They barely were in the same room together during this season.

The constantly barbs to the early seasons like the way Troi and Riker talked about their home life, the way they ignore Borg Queen Agnes whole existence... this season seems do disdainful of its predecessors, and even if they were full of flaws, this seems so unfair to me. Especially when this season have such a a weak plot being held together only by the talent and the charisma of the TNG crew, it's really not a good look. The story is weak, it's repetitive, it doesn't make sense when you think about it for too long.

And you know what it's sad? Man, I LOVE the TNG crew. In fact I love TNG; apart from Deep Space Nine, it's my favorite Star Trek series. I prefer it even over TOS. It makes me sad to see them being brought together again so messily, and in detriment of everything the Star Trek: Picard series had previously established, especially when you can see the ways it could have been good.

#my internet connection was down yesterday so i wrote this whole rant down lmao #long post #picard spoilers #star trek picard #Star Trek: Picard

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thegeminisage · 2 months

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ok! it's time for a ds9 update. last night we squeezed in "move along home" and "the nagus."

move along home (ds9):

i am Informed this is a divisive episode but honestly i had fun w it!!

nice 2 see jake always. every time jake is on screen w his dad sisko my best friend sisko get to exude good dad energy. love that.

like. please. he's gonna give jake the talk? at 14??? 14 is too late. he knows everything. also lmao the fact that nog there ferengi where women don't wear clothes told him everything. i'm choosing to ignore my annoyance with ferengis as a whole and find that funny because of sisko's reaction

reasonably funny antics between quark and odo here. i am getting a little tired of odo not getting anything to do besides flirt with quark, but then i have to remind myself that odo had an episode all to himself quite literally six episodes ago, it's just our insane watch order + bad batch and natla coming out that makes it feel longer to me

quark like screaming on his knees begging not to have to put someone to death when nbody was gonna die anyway was actually really funny, but i do like the nuance in his kneejerk reaction when he found out the pieces were people, which was to forsake pride and ask odo to play for him. he could have gotten defensive for the bit, which he did do later, but his first reaction was to be scared which is like completely normal and went a long way towards humanizing him in an otherwise VERY silly episode

my favorite moment of this episode, besides the part where they hotboxed the shap, was when those little balls of light were coming towards them and sisko was like FIND COVER and julian bashir, instead of finding cover, stood directly aainst the wall they were aiming at, ass first. and then died. i want that twink obliterated.png

the nagus (ds9):

thank you to whomstever warned me about this episode

it was not good and it did suck bad. i think this was the first real dud ds9 gave us (i'm not counting the q one cuz that was basically a tng episode in disguise). i feel like it would be sooo easy to walk back some of the really awful elements of the ferengi but instead of doing that we have chosen to crank them up to 11. sexism, antisemitism, etc etc...

my other problem is that. and before anyone gets mad i have a touch of faceblindness. I CANNOT TELL THOSE FERENGI APART. they gave two of the ferengi the same nose and i was totally lost trying to follow the plot.

quark holding the idiot ball. he's dumb in his own way because everyone on that space station is using their last brain cell but he's also very shrewd. so it just felt off. and again odo had nothing to do except flirt with him but that's a me problem

BUGS FOR DINNER. i hated this episode in more ways than one

THAT SAID. we finally got to see o'brien again! and shockingly i really really really really liked the b plot

i did go blind with rage when nog got pulled out of school. yes. but the rest of it.

first of all it's really funny that jake is running around with nog all the time and their families are both going DON'T!!! and sisko is like Oh No My Son Has Discovered Girls when there is every evidence he is even now discovering boys

SECONDLY sisko reminding o'brien that one day his adorable little three year old will be 14 and the light leaving o'brien's eyes

but my favorite part is that jake wasn't being late to curfew because he's a bad kid or falling under a bad influence. he's a GOOD kid doing an AWESOME thing. idk, it was really sweet that like, even when sisko was like "yeah racism's bad but with ferengi it's different" jake was like "is it? :/" and then went right on teaching his buddy how to read. and now he's earned dad's permission to hang out with nog finally. it was a fun little subplot that i didn't realize was going anywhere and then it did. a very pleasant surprise and kept the episode from being a complete drag.

also, dax coming it and daintily sampling sisko's soup or whatever, then deftly getting rid of sisko so she could help herself to a giant heap lmao. queen

anyway, even though that's definitely been the worst ds9 ep so far, it wasn't NEARLY as bad as some of tng's duds. i'm thinking specifically of "code of honor," "violations," etc. like it could have been so much worse. i'm not going to delude myself into thinking we're past all the clunkers just yet, but i was still expecting a solid hour of agony and what i got was not that. not good by any means but not tng. whew!

TONIGHT: "starship mine" and "lessons" from tng. thots and prayers🙏

#personal #star trek blogging #ds9 lb

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quasi-normalcy · 1 year

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Best Episodes of Star Trek by season (Revised and Expanded).

TOS:

"The City on the Edge of Forever" - Still probably Trek's best time travel plot. Would have been interesting if there had been more episodes by Harlan Ellison.

"The Trouble with Tribbles" - The fact that it manages to be hilarious and have good commentary about ecology and taking animals out of their natural habitat makes it peak Star Trek.

"Day of the Dove" - Kang is a formidable antagonist, and the commentary about how hatred and violence can seem to feed on themselves and become their own justification is evergreen.

"The Slaver Weapon" - This one's maybe a bit clunkily written, but I like the novelty of adapting Larry Niven's "known space" to Star Trek

TNG:

"Where No One Has Gone Before" - This one does what Star Trek so rarely manages: to make the universe seem huge and mysterious and full of wonders

"The Measure of a Man" - Like the best science fiction, this one takes a novum (the idea of a mechanical man), traces its implications legally, socially, and philosophically, and ends up shedding new light on the human condition. Brilliant.

"The Best of Both Worlds, Part 1" - This one is just an absolute master class in tension-building and enshrines the Borg as one of the greatest villains on television. There has seldom been such a good cliffhanger.

"Family" - What's interesting about this one is, it really doesn't have any science fiction trappings at all; it doesn't need them. Because, by this point, we're all so invested in the characters that we can watch an hour-long story about the captain recovering from trauma. It's also a major turning point in that we see that actions can have lasting consequences on episodic television.

"I, Borg" - Here, we establish a fascinating tension within the Borg: collectively, they're absolutely terrifying; individually, they're as innocent as any entity ever could be. Plus, we just get brilliant performances and a nice little story about not letting trauma lead you to commit evil acts.

"Face of the Enemy" - Troi was mostly ill-used, so it's really nice to see her kicking all kinds of ass here. Also, it gives us Commander Torreth, a character who is noble, virtuous, sympathetic, and heroic, but who is cast as a villain simply because politics place her in opposition to our heroes.

"All Good Things..." - Simply the perfect finale for this series.

DS9:

"Duet" - This is when you knew that Deep Space Nine was going to be a great series. Powerful performances and a great twist at the end.

"The Circle" - Really this is for the entire three-part arc of which this was the middle installment. It's a shame that they stopped focusing on Bajor later in this series, because it's so good here.

"Improbable Cause" - Garak at his most magnificent versus Odo as a great detective. Fantastic.

"Bar Association" - One really must admire an American TV series from the Clinton Administration that would favourably quote the Communist Manifesto.

"In the Cards" - One of Trek's best comedy episodes, and its embedded in such a dark story arc that it really stands out. Nog and Jake accidentally making everyone's lives a little better as they try to do something nice for Sisko.

"In the Pale Moonlight" - Easily the best 'subverting utopia' episode in DS9's run. We see that heroes do not emerge cleanly from war.

"Tacking into the Wind" - This one pays off two arcs--Klingon politics and the Cardassian/Bajoran conflict--that had been building across a decade's worth of stories, and does so brilliantly.

VOY:

"Jetrel" - This is why I have no time tor people who hate Neelix. The character is just heartbreaking here.

"The Thaw" - Probably the most surreal episode Trek has ever done, with a truly chilling (but satisfying) ending.

"Distant Origin" - This one just has a fantastic premise. What if there was a species descended from the Dinosaurs? What if there was a Dinosaur Galileo? Plus, it's so interesting to do a whole episode that's mostly told from the aliens' point of view.

"Living Witness" - This one has everything; action, social commentary, and a nifty little story about how commitment to historical truth is ultimately good for everyone. Possibly the best episode of the franchise overall, honestly.

"Bride of Chaotica!" - Neither the first nor last holodeck episode, but the holodeck episode par excellence; and such a loving tribute to 1930s sci-fi serials.

"Blink of an Eye" - Just a nifty little episode about a planet where time runs quickly. Voyager at its best is just really good sci-fi short stories.

"The Void" - A ship lost and alone, running low on supplies, and needing to make alliances in order to survive. THIS is what Voyager *should* have been like all along

ENT:

"The Andorian Incident" - Gives is one of Enterprise's best characters in Shran, and offers some much needed development for two of Star Trek oldest alie races. I also love that the Vulcans really were in the wrong here.

"The Minefield" - A tense character study for Malcolm Reed which also shows us first contact between Earth and one of Star Trek's best villains.

"The Forgotten" - One thing that Enterprise did better than any other series is how it handled death. Here, we get a nice meditation on grief, plus a deconstruction of the "Redshirt" phenomenon.

"Terra Prime" - What makes this one work so well is that the things that the yobs in Terra Prime are saying about Vulcans sound only slightly more extreme than some of the things that Archer and Trip were saying in the first season. Thus, Enterprise converts one of its worst aspects into an opportunity for growth. Still Trek's best commentary on the alt-right.

DIS:

"Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad" - In the midst of the doom and gloom of the firstvseason, it was mice to see that Trek could still pull off a comedy episode.

"Through the Valley of Shadows" - Pike learns his fate and accepts it nonetheless. Because he's a hero, dammit.

"Unification III" - One of the things that Disco going a thousand years into the future allows is for *really* long-term story arcs to be paid off; here, we find that Vulcans and Romulans have finally merged back into one culture.

"Species Ten-C" - Just a very good science fiction story about learning how to talk to aliens who aren't even remotely human.

PIC:

"The Impossible Box" - Soji's identity finally comes to a head; we get some really nice world building for the Romulans and the XBs; and Picard learns to look at the Borg in a new light.

"Penance" - This episode had what the rest of season 2 so sorely wanted: a plot. Plus, we get a delightful scene between Picard and Q and the first seeds of the magnificent Jurati/Borg Queen pairing. What's not to love?

"No Win Scenario" - This episode had what I loved best about TNG: a bunch of really smart people solving a problem by being clever. Plus, we have Shaw's heartbreaking monologue, Seven being awesome, Riker throwing an asteroid at Vadic, and a nice moment of awe and majesty with the space babies. Also, Jack's stupid mystery box plot had barely started up at this point, so that helps.

LWD:

"No Small Parts" - Where Lower Decks excels is not in expanding the universe, but in deepening it. Here, we get one of the best "not so harmless" moments ever with the return of the Pakleds, some genuinely really impressive space battle scenes, and Boimler finally getting the respect he deserves.

"wej Duj" - What's great about this episode is that it could *only* be done by Lower Decks. Again, we deepen the universe by showing inside views of the Klingon and Vulcan cultures, resolve an ongoing story arc, and get some good gags and character development in as well. And the end-credits gag is absolutely hilarious.

SNW:

"Crisis Point 2: Paradoxus" - We use a holodeck gag to get a genuinely poignant commentary on humanity's search for meaning in the face of death. Plus, I also love the secondary message: it doesn't matter if everyone else hates a piece of media, it's good if it's meaningful to *you*

"Something Borrowed, Something Green" - Backstory for Tendi, the Orions become a top-shelf Alien race, T'Lyn gets some banger lines, and we get Twin Twains

"Children of the Comet" - We get a fascinating premise, a fascinating new alien race, and more character development in one hour than Uhura got in the preceding 56 years.

"Ad Astra Per Aspera" - A nifty and timely courtroom drama that shows us the complications of civil rights cases.

PRO:

"Let Sleeping Borg Lie" - I'm glad that a new generation will grow-up being horrified/fascinated by the Borg. As it should be!

(These ones were a lot harder to pick than the worst ones)

#the original series #the next generation #deep space nine #voyager #enterprise #discovery #picard #lower decks #prodigy #strange new worlds

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weerd1 · 6 months

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It’s Been a Long Road: Two decades after “Star Trek: Enterprise” I still have Faith of the Heart.

After the click, there are 2300 words of me doing a deep dive on my love for "Star Trek: Enterprise." You have been warned.

When I was in elementary school, I was a year younger than my peers. My mom had decided I didn’t need to go to Kindergarten as I was already reading ahead of my level, so she insisted I be placed at age 5 directly into 1st Grade. In ways she was right; I completed the reading and phonics program in my little Arizona school for the entire first grade before Christmas. To this day though, I am clumsy with scissors, paste, and all the “kindergarten skills” and I spent the rest of my school career smaller, weaker, and less coordinated than everyone in my class.

This probably all worked out in the end; sure, I couldn’t play sports, but to avoid bullies and getting picked on, I got funny, and that’s worked out pretty well for me. But in those days when I would play a sport such as baseball, the opposing team would step a little closer, the coaches would advise me to take the walk; I was not as good as my peers, so allowances were made for my performance.

That is exactly how I looked at “Star Trek: Enterprise” for years. It was only four seasons, while its powerhouse predecessors all had seven. It wasn’t set in a utopian far future, but rather not too far from now meaning more modern and vernacular language. The science seemed a little spurious, with writers seeming to think the term “Rigel” was just some made-up word from older Trek series rather than older Trek series using actual star names for locations. The knowledge of Trek seemed a little lacking as well, with the first episode citing “Klingon Warbirds” and basing the hero ship on a design introduced in a then recent movie…that was set 200 years later.

I watched though, as we were coming off of there being CONSTANT Trek on television for the previous 15 years, and this was what we had.

I groused then, a lot. The lack of continuity, the trivia gaffes, the over-sexualization of women characters (ok, that WAS more than a bit overdone, and I still grouse that point).

The theme song. Oh my lord, the theme song.

But eventually, this show won me over, almost in spite of itself. Then there was a major shift in tone for the third season, and it got to be pretty solid, and the FOURTH season was…STAR TREK! Like its predecessors, the show had taken some time to find its footing (c’mon, admit how uneven the first couple of seasons of TNG were), but had pulled itself together, and the show’s future looked bright in 2005!

And then there was a truly terrible last episode and ENT was cancelled and gone.

Twenty years later, here I am, and though the absence of new Trek only lasted about four years—until JJ Abrams 2009 movie—I felt that absence keenly then. I am glad to report there has been Trek I really enjoy since then…and some marginal entries, but that’s not new either honestly. But with all this new material, I still find myself going back to revisit Archer and his crew. I’ve rewatched maybe two TNG episodes in the last 15 years. Maybe two or three Voyager episodes. But TOS, DS9, and ENT I hit regularly. Why does ENT keep forcing itself to the front of my Trek consciousness?

From the beginning, ENT suffered from some external pressures that weren’t helpful to its development. There was a tension between doing more of the same, successful formula Trek had been delivering since “Encounter at Farpoint” (the TNG pilot episode from 1987) and doing something experimental and new. Viewer fatigue was setting in a bit, but fans were vociferous in what THEY thought Trek meant. Anything that strayed too far would take a beating on the internet message boards.

DS9 had just finished off their wartime storyline, and though there were adamant Niners, it was only just beginning to truly find its audience with the advent of home video allowing one to actually watch the whole thing. Meanwhile, the less arc-oriented VOY had added the character Seven. There had been a ratings increase, which the producers took to mean any new show needed an attractive woman in a catsuit. Remember also, we were in the midst of the Star Wars Prequel trilogy, so going BACK to a time when the story could be a little looser was floating in the zeitgeist.

But it was also 2001, and though the visual continuity of the then modern Treks had maintained a history inclusive and accepting of TOS, putting a starship on screen that would look like a century’s LESS development than Matt Jefferies’ design from the mid-1960s was going to be problematic.

I don’t know this is true, but I also suspect that since the previous shows had a British man, a Black man, and a Woman as captains, someone in Production wanted to make sure there was a white, American man back in the center seat. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s my gut.

So all of this goes into the show, and honestly it kicks off as a bit of a hot mess. So much seems to be playing it safe. Some fairly cliched storylines that occasionally try something a little new. A few things it does try new are not quite there: That aforementioned over-sexualization of the women in the crew*. Cringy comments about relations with aliens. Archer watching water polo.

There are a lot of forgettable episodes, contradictions. And yet, I kept watching. Yeah, I was on message boards complaining about the tech looking too advanced. I’d gripe about how un-Vulcan the Vulcans seemed. I’d gripe about every violation of what I accepted as canon, that was often really just things the fandom had settled on in the 70s and had no basis on the show. And I was just a complete tool online when the first cloaking device showed up.

And the theme song, oh my lord, the theme song.

But I kept watching. And before I knew it, I started to appreciate something about this show. I had to make a choice between griping that this modern show that I was actually enjoying didn’t adhere to a single line of dialog written (then) 40 years before for a show that wasn’t expected to last a year. I, a staunch Trek gatekeeper, was having an awakening about continuity and canon, and I had to figure out why. Finally it hit me.

These characters, these performers, they were more than they should be. These characters were making me love them, even when the stories were mediocre or cliche or counter to what I believed was canon.

Take Jonathan Archer, played with almost megaton-levels of earnestness by Scott Bakula. Archer’s earnest, do-gooder nature is so extreme…you know how a show like “Family Guy,” does a joke, and it’s ok, and then it keeps going way too long, and you get sick of it. And then it keeps going still, and somehow, this only kinda-funny joke goes so long or so far that it actually manages to somehow loop back around to being not just funny, but hilarious. That’s Archer’s earnestness, his naiveté. His “oh gosh” nature is interesting and fun compared to Kirk’s bravado. Then, after he oh goshes his way into losing ANOTHER fight, he’s simply grating. THEN you start to think he’s just devastatingly boring. But if you keep watching, then it comes around to this unironic serving of safe-guy that doesn’t blink in how GOLLY he is as a hero and you smile when he all but winks at the camera. And then, in later seasons when he’s faced with some pretty devastating moral dilemmas, you FEEL it!

T’Pol, played by Jolene Blalock: she’s so attractive it almost hurts to look at her, but you realize soon after that while she somehow seems to keep ending up getting rubbed down in decon Jolene is BRINGING the performance. That her delivery, her tone; the micro-expressions which betray her stoic facade for the Vulcan emotions at a full boil underneath…you buy it. You realize her performance is wonderful, and she’s one of the best Vulcans in the entire franchise.

Connor Trinneer as the character I recently described as “Florida Man in Space,” Trip Tucker. He’s a walking cliche, his accent making “warp-field plasma conduits” sound like something you’d serve up with sweet tea and grits. He’s got Himbo energy that rivals the output of his anti-matter reactor, and still it works. His “I don’t really know much about anything, but I’m willing to learn…oh God I’m pregnant” (actual episode) speaks so beautifully to humans DISCOVERING things for the first time, screwing it up, but learning from their mistakes and going back for more!

I could easily go on about Travis Mayweather, the kid who grew up in space and is both completely knowledgeable and blissfully ignorant of anything that goes on out there. Malcolm Reed, the British tactical officer who if his upper lip was any stiffer, he could use it as a weapon. Hoshi Sato who starts out completely out of her depth, and ends up loving it all. Dr. Phlox, your over-friendly, polyamorous uncle who brandishes optimism like a flame thrower and plays with eels.

They are all just…TOO. Too this, too that, and in doing so, somehow all circle back to being absolutely perfect. Because as flawed as ENT is in its storytelling at times, and how mired it is in attitudes before #metoo, the IDEA of the show is a great one: How does humanity get from the mess we are now to the icons of TOS or TNG? Enterprise shows us it wasn’t a switch, but a road. A long road, getting from there to here.

Yes, even the damn theme song, hokey and way too on the nose is EXACTLY RIGHT for what this show means.

Somewhere along the line, we all knew we had to move in a little closer when ENT comes up to bat, but we all started wishing, hoping, that maybe it would get a home run.

And sometimes, just sometimes, these characters that are great in spite of themselves, and this design, that’s too good for what it should be**, and this show that’s just not on the level of its predecessors does exactly that and knocks one into the stands. Suddenly it’s season four, and Enterprise manages to sum up the humanity Star Trek has been serving up since 1966 better than any show before or since:

Vulcan Ambassador Soval: We don't know what to do about Humans. Of all the species we've made contact with, yours is the only one we can't define. You have the arrogance of Andorians, the stubborn pride of Tellarites. One moment, you're as driven by your emotions as Klingons, and the next, you confound us by suddenly embracing logic.

Admiral Maxwell Forrest: I'm sure those qualities are found in every species.

Vulcan Ambassador Soval: Not in such confusing abundance.

We’re not perfect, we’re not utopian, but we are AMAZING when we give ourselves the chance, and for me, Enterprise takes that idea and runs with it. It often swings and misses, but when it connects, we can smile and clap and let it take its run around the bases, because it makes us feel good. And if it weren’t for Enterprise teaching me how these lessons, these characters are more important that visual continuity or strict adherence to arcane canon, I wouldn’t have accepted the Kelvin timeline. The DISCO Klingons. The Strange New Worlds uniforms, sets, and character interpretations. Because as much as I love what Star Trek means, all of that deeper meaning is nothing if it isn’t entertaining. And Enterprise taught me how important that was.

I could go on about how much better the show got when Berman and Braga took a back seat to Manny Coto, though there are certainly strong arguments that he got a little too fan-servicey. But in the end, the point is CBS took over and closed down Enterprise just as it found its footing. I hope the wave of nostalgia we’re seeing applied (perhaps TOO applied in shows like “Picard”) to modern Trek means we get more than a passing Lower Decks reference to the show. And if not, well, I’ve got my copies, and my fan fic, and my Tumblr memes.

Most importantly though, I’ve got (I’ve got, I’ve got) Faith of the Heart.

*I will give the show credit at least that it was pretty willing to flaunt shirtless men as well, and biceps-a-plenty.

**In regard to things looking more advanced, I will give credit to Brannon Braga for dropping a hint in an interview at the end of season 1 that the Enterprise-E coming back in “First Contact” had subtly altered the timeline, making things a little more advanced. Fans—and I regret to include myself—railed against that online, and it wasn’t really mentioned again. Recently, Strange New Worlds has revisited and canonized the idea that the timeline, even though it is the Prime timeline, DOES go through shifts and changes due to temporal incursions, evidenced wonderfully in the episode “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” when a Romulan time traveler admits to altering time so the rise of Khan happens not at the 1992 date that Spock gave us in the original series “Space Seed” to now to him still being a child 30 years later. It’s in-story shorthand for the fact that when a show goes for six decades some continuity has to change and THAT IS OK. I wasn’t ready to accept it then, but am glad it’s now part of Trek.

#star trek #star trek enterprise #long post #another jackass opinion #former gatekeeping asshole #i got better

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mylittleredgirl · 2 years

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all the posts about harry kim getting shafted have me thinking about What Could Have Been and YES he should have gotten promoted and that is the LEAST they could do, but it should have been so much more than that. harry could and should have been the audience self-insert pov growing-into-hero character we deserved.

basically, he's perfectly set up to fill the wesley crusher role on voyager without the three things that pissed off tng fans (unfairly imho): that wesley was a literal teenager, a civilian who hadn't earned the right to be an officer, and that he was overpowered because he kept figuring out answers alone.

harry's strength isn't in his individual genius, but in his a) relentless starfleet optimism, and b) ability to collaborate and bring out the best in other people. his weakness is that he has been on the job for 14 hours when everything goes to hell.

if they weren't so allergic to continuity, voyager is set up to be theee individual character development show and they should have leaned into that hard (because tng was the "these characters are already the best starfleet has to offer" one and ds9 already had the "we all have to learn to collaborate with our different objectives and points of view" story well in hand). so let harry be the flagship character of that story!!

first off: he shouldn't have walked on board as the operations officer. almost nothing has to change for this. let his first conversation with janeway when he comes on board be about his potential. "it's a special privilege to be a starfleet officer's first captain," she says, which tells us a lot about her character right off the bat (she's great at spotting potential and loves to develop people). "your job is to do your best and watch and learn from the experienced officers around you, and one day you'll make a great one."

and then two scenes later we get flung into the delta quadrant and the senior bridge officers DIE, and in that moment of holy shit this is my first day on the job and all these people died and i don't know what's going on, harry steps up!! and in the ocampa arc he shows how he handles first contact like a starfleet officer even when literally dying. after the pilot we would totally get why janeway is like "welp i guess you're getting that chance to be a senior officer a lot sooner than expected." both he and the audience know that he's stepping into huge shoes he's not really qualified for (last held on-screen by DATA) but we want to root for him!!

and i don't think anyone else's story has to be sacrificed for this either. i know the EMH and b'elanna have fish-out-of-water senior officer stories already, but this is something different. those two are both fully confident in their individual abilities, but need to learn the interpersonal skills to work with others and lead a department. harry needs practical experience to offset his academy idealism and develop faith in his own skill.

and tom's story isn't competition because that's a "second chance" narrative and has a totally different arc.

so that's the setup, and THEN we get to go through all the things that actually already happen on-screen with harry (and more of the same -- a "nightingale" type story should have happened way sooner). there should have been more of the kind of scenes with janeway that we got at the end of "emanations" where she helps him process his experiences and recognizes him for his development. give the kid some medals! his night shift command could have been be a big deal!

and YEAH he finally gets promoted! i think it should come either after "the killing game," or after an unwritten episode where all the senior officers are captured somewhere and harry has to rally a handful of lower decks crewmen to save the day. that would be a fantastic episode in this storyline actually, because it could start with him kind of bemoaning that he's not really a command officer because he doesn't get to / can't make these bold command decisions on his own that janeway & chakotay do -- janeway especially gets a lot of individual heroism moments. but here you have him in charge of some scared crewmen and yeah he makes some decisions but also he leans into his strengths and raises them all up. in some nice narrative parallels, he gives them a speech that janeway gave him early on about how You Can Do It Actually.

and at the end of that, janeway gets to talk to him about how every captain has a unique style. she can't give him his own ship, but here, now he's one pip closer.

anyway since that did NOT happen paramount owes me money and they can pay me back by having the phrase "youngest admiral in starfleet history harry kim" spoken aloud and guys you literally have FOUR actively airing shows where this could happen.

#star trek voyager #all of this is isn't that original so probably didn't need to be resaid but it's my blog and i want to #harry kim #deserved this!! garrett wang deserved this!#and voyager would've been so much better for it i'm still so mad #voyager is deep inside in The Fandom Zone of that alignment chart. so much character potential wasted #meanwhile harry #star trek thoughts

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charlottedabookworm · 1 year

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i love the fact that i'm watching the new star trek picard with my grandad and aunt. i don't even care that I have to wait two days to watch every episode because my grandad started this - decades ago my grandad fell in love with scifi, with trek, and he raised my mum and my aunt on it when they were growing up, he shared his love of it with them and they loved it too and then when I was growing up, nearly thirty years after my mum, mum raised me and my brothers on it, she shared her love of it with us, showed us her favourite episodes and her favourite series, and we loved it too

i've loved trek for as long as i can remember. i grew up watching the first four seasons of VOY on the VCR, the final three seasons on DVD, playing bridge crew with my brother and pirating DS9 on my shitty laptop my parents got me for Christmas in secondary school. i grew up debating the ending of VOY - a series that ended when I was three - for hours with my aunt and watching TOS and TNG and ENT side by side with my brother and going to see 09 twice in the cinemas so we could watch it with mum and with our aunt

we screamed over DSC and i've had hour long text convos with my bro about Seven of Nine and i watched all of PIC season two with my mum and I love it

i loved trek since i was born because my mum loves it, my aunt loves it, my grandad loves it, my baby brother loves it, and I love that I can share this series of PIC with family like I've shared all of trek so far

i just really wish they'd turn the fucking subtitles on

#star trek #my grandad and aunt find subtitles really distracting #which is fair #but i am missing so many little lines because I am just not processing what people are saying

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quordleona03 · 1 year

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8 shows for your mutuals to get to know you better

I was tagged by @marley--manson

Blake's 7 - I once described my relationship with Blake's 7 as like the one you might have with your first girlfriend. You came out together! You two were the first lesbians each of you had ever met; You share so many lesbian firsts together. You split up before you were even going to uni, you may not see each other very often now, but there's still that sweet, sweet, unforgettable first attachment. That was me for Blake's 7. The first show I ever wrote fanfic for. The first show for which I had a proper fannish obsession. The first show for which I ever spent three days weeping and writing obsessively after I was left in a state of misery and shock after the fourth season finale . I have a complete set of B7 DVDs sitting on the shelf above this computer. I haven't actually watched them but sometimes I offer them flowers.

2. Doctor Who. This was my very first convention - the Doctor Who 20th Anniversary Con at Longleat, Easter weekend 1983. My parents asked me what I'd like to do for Easter, and were more than a little startled when I told them, but they paid my train fare and my con membership and let me go and I had my very first experience of fandom standing in those queues. I have dipped into and out of Doctor Who since I first watched Tom Baker flaunt his ever so long scarf.

3. Star Trek: TOS - and the original four movies. I watched these without as much obsession, but - I read James Blish's novelisations, I still have a collection of the good Trek novels on my shelf, I once organised a group reading of the Price of the Phoenix at a slash con, I have written Spock/McCoy fanfic (it's the Mirror episode, mostly) and I have been to K/S cons. I quite like DS9 and ST:tng too - I've written fanfic for tng - but Star Trek before it needed a TOS label was the first fandom I got to share with friends in person, as opposed to friends I knew by post and fanzine and at cons.

4. Cagney & Lacey. I loved this show. So did my mum. This is the only fandom I ever shared with my mum, and we loved it the same way: two kick-ass women who were best friends and also the only two women cops in their precinct. I was not conscious enough of racial issues in the US at the time I was watching it to be conscious that the New York Cagney and Lacey moved in was very unexpectedly white at all times, but I'm afraid I would see it now. On the other hand, if anyone can point me at *good* recordings of the episodes I would love to watch them again - my mum had the complete set recorded on VHS tapes and, well, gone with the dinosaurs and my late mother's estate.

5. The Professionals. Such a British show. Written and aired well before the anti-drunk driving campaigns, Bodie and Doyle and Cowley drink to excess, show no signs of being drunk, and then drive fast cars and wave guns around after drinking to excess. I wrote Bodie/Cowley fanfic for it because at the time I discovered the fandom, it felt like every Bodie/Doyle story and then some had already been written (and were still being written) but also because I really adored the way Gordon Jackson and Lewis Collins interacted with each other. Cowley and Bodie were both ex-soldiers doing a secret-police job: Doyle was a former cop transferred to CI5: the best fanfiction written covered the brutality and the danger and the kind of personality that thrived on it. The political viewpoints expressed by Bodie, Cowley, and Doyle were so far from being mine that it felt reckless to write them, and I enjoyed that: but the background to the story - 1970s UK/London - was so close to my real life (1980s/1990s Scotland/SE England) that it felt sometimes impossibly easy to write.

6. House MD I had been vaguely aware that Hugh Laurie had moved to the US and was doing a show about a doctor in an American hospital and I was entirely uninterested - US doctor/hospital series (with ONE exception) had never appealed to me. And then I saw a poster, at the bus stop, on my way home. It is a rule that anything she see advertised on public transport is bad, but I looked at the unshaven and somehow agonised face of Hugh Laurie, whom I remembered well from quite other series, and I though: Okay, I'll give this a go, and I watched one episode - somewhere in the first season, I do not recall which one, oddly enough: and I was hooked. I never wrote much fanfic for it, but Greg House and his coterie of characters - Wilson, Cameron, Chase, Foreman, and Cuddy - and to a certain extent the later ducklings - were formidable ingredients for story telling. I own every season on DVD.

7. The West Wing. I have been a politics nerd for most of my life, and a friend who was aware of this tempted me into watching an early episode of TWW (it may even have been the pilot episode) by telling me it was a drama about politics - not so much about elections, but about the behind-the-scenes work that makes politics. I watched it from season one, and I own every season on DVD.

8. M*A*S*H I became obsessed with MASH in two phases - first one about twenty years ago, which sparked a period of about five years writing fanfic: and again, I'm not sure why, in lockdown - suddenly the characters walked back into my mind and I started writing MASH fanfic again. Who to tag, who to tag: @jaelijn @topshelf2112-blog @cplredberet @blistersonmefingehs @bbjkrss-blog (but don't feel obliged unless you want to)

#Blake's 7 #Star Trek: TOS #The Professionals #Cagney & Lacey #Doctor Who #House MD #The West Wing #mash tv #fanfic #fannish obsessions

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hjea · 6 months

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Nine people I'd like to get to know better

Tagged by: @talshiargirlfriend

Last song: St. Peter’s Bay - Sarah Harmer

Favorite colour: Blue or green! But really any thing primary and saturated enough for me to enjoy, as I have moderate to sever red-green colour blindness.

Last movie/TV show: I just watched High on the Hog season two, which is such a considered and powerful food documentary. Also earlier this week I watched Squid Game for the first time, three years late. I get the hype! It was good!

Sweet/spicy/savoury?: Yes, all of it. Yummy.

Relationship status: I Live Alone and It’s Awesome

Last thing I Googled: How to spell “liopleurodon” because I remembered that Charlie the Unicorn video and I needed to get those dumb quotes stuck in my friends’ heads as well.

Current obsession: Star Trek Enterprise is a big way, obviously (the potential!!!). Last week I did a curated trek night for @eggsworthy and her brother, pairing “Carbon Creek” with TNG’s “Who Watches the Watchers”, since they’re fully to blame for my Star Trek obsession to begin with (it only took 12 years of gentle persuasion and a pandemic for me to finally relent and put on an episode, and now look at me).

Tag nine people: anyone who wants to do this, consider yourself tagged!

#aww this was fun #very old school internet vibes and i’m into it

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pzfr · 3 months

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Gimmie a bit o' da Red Dwarf. ( or Farscape or Stargate or any other sci-fi show ya like. Tryin' to get off my butt and start these shows myself )

SEND ME A FRANCHISE OR SERIES AND I WILL TALK ABOUT IT

it can be a movie, tv show, game etc.

____

Floodgates have opened--

____

I started watching Red Dwarf just as I was finishing up Star Trek: Enterprise (2001) and had basically watched all pre-2009 Trek shows. I'd heard of it and decided to give it a try since I do enjoy a good sitcom and I couldn't have picked a better moment for it.

It's both inspired and takes jabs at the sci-fi of its era. Especially Alien and Blade Runner. A good bit of ribbing since Star Trek TNG/DS9/VOY were the shows to compete with back then (Patrick Stewart almost sued them until he found himself laughing at their jokes!). The humor is like a cruder Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It's like Doctor Who's trashier cousin.

As its own thing it's just a really great show about a very desolate, unforgiving universe three million years into the future post-humanity with the worst roommates imaginable on a clunky old mining starship. Every series/season is six 30 minute episodes. It's weakness is it's written by two british dudes who sometimes think they're sooooo clever. But the rest of the time it just hits.

____

Farscape is bizarre. Like even by sci-fi TV show standards it is bizarre. Love how the majority of accents are Australian given where the show was produced. The Jim Henson Company made a lot of incredible puppets and effects for the series (which they use to great effect always). The characters are all nuts and constantly colliding into each other.

I think you would absolutely love it, Spider. Four seasons and a two TV movie final storyline to wrap it all up. The crew is the very definition of ragtag. Their interactions have insane chemistry-- they communicate clearly and effectively without diminishing narrative conflicts, and still manage to show surprising warmth.

I was in the middle of Stargate SG-1 when I learned Ben Browder and Claudia Black would join SG-1 in the last couple seasons. So I took a detour to watch Farscape and it did not disappoint. Four seasons and a two-part movie length each wrapup. There's unreasonably advanced science, there's sorcery, living starships, and no shortage of boisterous personalities.

____

I'm still in the middle of Stargate SG-1. It kind of has its flaws being a military science fiction show that uses an Ancient Alien-like setup as its basis. But still very action-packed and has some great moments as speculative, science fiction.

The thing that keeps me coming back to it is that unlike Starfleet over in Trek, Stargate Command has no prime directive. Just vibes. Early on they say they value self-determination but the show can flipflop between criticizing the military and lionizing it. They're able to interact more freely with cultures they encounter but also the [US AIR FORCE], the one organization that desperately needs something like the prime directive does. Not. Have one!!

Its premise also allows it to be a fusion of Indiana Jones and Star Wars. The main villains for the majority of the series, the Goa'uld, masquerade as the gods of Earth religions and conduct their tyranny with similar such superstition-- having brought humans from Earth to live and slave away on other planets.

It was also meant to be more contemporary to when it aired between 1997-2007 rather than set in the far future. The SGC was operated in secret. Some episodes are just about exploring ruins on Earth or stopping alien-related crimes. Earth eventually builds its own hyperdrive-equipped starships. They're friends with greys called the Asgard. Not exactly the same vein, but it's close to why I liked Enterprise 2001, which was a prequel to all the other Treks. Those formative steps into exploring the universe... making friends... aheem heem...

___

I already won't stfu about Star Trek but I say it again The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise are all great. That whole era is not only my favorite but it's also the most realized that Star Trek's setting and the unique flavor of the franchise have ever been (and why out of the newer shows I like Lower Decks because it loves this era too).

#[ooc] out of orbit #[ask] letters column

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as-roddenberry-intended · 3 months

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Watching Star Trek in Chronological Order: Just as Gene Roddenberry Intended

A few years ago, someone in the comments section of a podcast that would be impossible to find now suggested an idea, and that idea has been stuck in my head ever since. It's like a worm, burrowing through my brain. I couldn't let it go. I even tried to do this as a podcast, but it turns out podcasts are time consuming to make, so here we are.

The idea is, as the title suggests, to watch all of Star Trek in chronological order, by stardate. This means starting with a few episodes featuring time travel (not all), then going into Enterprise and continuing on from there. The last thing in the current timeline is the Short Treks episode Calypso, though at the time of writing it remains to be seen how canon that is.

I am inviting you all to join me on this journey. Star Trek as a work of collaborative media that has spanned over 60 years has always fascinated me. Can so many people and so many creative visions all come together to create one coherent narrative? Well, no, but I want to treat it like one anyway.

So this means watching everything. Well, almost everything. I will be following a spreadsheet that I have been working on and been actively updating as new episodes release. The bulk of the work was copied from the Star Trek Chronology Project, weaving together many of the live action shows. All of the animated shows were fairly easy to figure out, so I have added them in as well (minus Very Short Treks).

Most time travel will be ignored, taking place where they would normally from the time traveler's perspectives rather than from the universe's. The two exceptions to this rule are DS9's Past Tense, and the TNG movie First Contact. The former takes place in 2024 and is as much about a historical event as it is about the time travelers, and the latter shows the birth of the federation and seeds some Enterprise storylines later on. Beyond that, you'll have to wait till DS9 to watch Little Green Men. Also, we will be revisiting these time travel episodes in their normal places as well. Finally, if time travel happens WITHIN the series (eg Trials and Tribbalations), we'll watch those episodes twice as well.

As far as I am concerned, most animated content is canon. This means the three main animated shows: TAS, LRD, and PRD, plus all animated Short Treks.

The Kelvin Timeline is also canon, though I don't group it with TOS. It is the result in a time travel event that occurs after the destruction of Romulus, so I have put it between the Short Trek Children of Mars and the start of Star Trek Picard.

If you're curious about the watch order, here is the spreadsheet in all its glory:

I'll be reviewing episodes as I watch them. If enough people are interested in making this a community thing, I will come up with a schedule and even maybe make a discord, but for now I'll just be posting reviews at whatever pace I happen to watch things in.

So my friends, please join me as we embark on a journey that Zefram Cochrane so succinctly calls "Some kind of Star Trek". We will strive to avoid the notice of Temporal Investigations, and adhere as much as we can to the Temporal Prime Directive.

Let's watch all of Star Trek in order, just as Roddenberry intended.

#star trek #ds9 #enterprise #tos #the star trek will continue until morale improves

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the-alpha-incipiens · 6 months

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20 questions for fic writers

shamelessly stolen from @sapphicsandscience <3 questions and rambly answers beneath the read more!

How many works do you have on AO3?

63.

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

451,140.

I’m kind of impressed that it’s almost half a million, but also just how much I wrote in the last two years after not writing/publishing anything at all in 2021.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Currently, Star Trek: TNG and PIC. Before that, the fandom I wrote the most for was Once Upon a Time. Everything else was just two or three fics, at least on AO3. I’ve been writing fic for decades so there are A LOT of fics and fandoms that have been lost to time. (Random shout out to Battlestar Galactica, which I wrote for back in my LiveJournal days!)

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

I’m going to do two sets here, because my All Years one are all OUAT fics no one cares about anymore, and I have enough fics published from this year to have a top five of 2023 so my current fandom has something to read that will make sense to them lol.

All Years

The Fire’s Found a Home in Me - my Dragon Outlaw Queen magnum opus, the one shot collection that makes up the bulk of my Flicker Beat universe that divulges in season four. Technically “unfinished” but complete since it was never intended to have a true ending.

It Happened Once… - a Evil Captain Charming crackfic that honestly has way more kudos than I expected. This one for some reason sees a lot of traction still. It was originally supposed to have a just-as-cracky sequel, but I never finished it.

A Loaded God Complex - ah, Golden Queen, my guilty pleasure OUAT ship. Set in s6, this was the start of a set of one-shots that took the romantic Golden Queen that finally blossomed in that season and ran with it. Mostly involves a lot of dark power struggles masking as sex. Aptly all titled after Fall Out Boy lyrics, if I say so myself.

Put Your Venom in Me - another Golden Queen fic, see above.

The Computation - a little Dragon Queen one-shot I did, short and sweet. Honestly surprised it’s on here, because it’s not my best work by any means.

2023

peace - my Picard/Crusher fic set directly after the epilogue in the PIC s3 finale. I was pleasantly surprised by how much attention this fic has gotten. I had suspected I would end up writing a prequel, but I never thought it’d turn into the four part series that it has. I hope everyone still enjoys it.

Mastermind - the first Star Trek: TNG fic I wrote since I was a teenager watching TNG for the first time! This was entirely thanks to my friend Jess, if I’m remembering correctly? She prompted me to rewrite the season 2 episode “Manhunt” with Beverly in it instead of Pulaski, because my favorite toxic trait of Beverly’s is her jealousy.

what could’ve been, should’ve been (you) - my PIC s3 Picard/Crusher masterpiece. I got the idea for this by the end of episode two, struggled with it as the season went on, and then finally wrangled it into something that I truly love.

in the business of misery - jealous!Beverly makes a reappearance in this s4 TNG fic that fixes QPid. Because fuck Vash, okay.

trustfall - dlfshfsl this fic. If what could’ve been, should’ve been (you) is my PIC masterpiece, I think trustfall is my TNG one. I disparage it a bit by talking as if it’s shameless smut, but honestly I’m quite proud of it as a character piece as Picard and Beverly navigate a new relationship and new dynamics across 11k of words. Set in TNG s3, post-Sarek.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I try to! I genuinely appreciate comments, because I find it quite difficult to give them myself, so as a part of trying to be better I also try to respond to comments. I’m an awkward turtle, though, so I feel like I usually end up babbling about things people probably did not care about. If I don’t babble, I usually just leave a short and sweet “thanks for reading” that I hope doesn’t come across as insincere.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Probably Winter Song, a OUAT fic I actually wrote for a holiday fandom advent calendar we did back in the OQ fandom. It’s a wedding fic, and smutty as is my usual, but it’s got a heavy dose of sadness. I sort of tried to make it hopeful in the end, because ending a Christmas fic with no hope felt like I was killing Christmas.

Another OUAT fic I wrote, A Spark to Ignite, was also really angsty, now that I think about it and doesn’t involve any character death (canon or otherwise). It was supposed to have a part two that fixed it but I never wrote it.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Oooh. I’ll be polite and not take “happiest ending” to be dirty, even though I could list SO MANY fics for that.

bound to break, my Greatest Showman AU that I wrote for Outlaw Queen (OUAT fandom, again) ends pretty cleancut happily after having some angst in the middle. And it’s technically a multi chapter fic, though it’s short lol.

I Know, I Know, I Know (I Feel the Same as You) as my Outlaw Queen college AU always makes me happy when I think about the ending.

8. Do you get hate on fic?

Not really. I’ve gotten some comments that were definitely unnecessary and mean-spirited, but nothing major. Truthfully, I’m not nearly a big enough deal to get hate.

9. Do you write smut?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Sorry, nothing against anyone who doesn’t, but writing smut is basically all I do. It’s what I was known for in my previous fandom. It’s the thing I find the easiest to write, and secretly I suffer from a lot of insecurity because I feel like it’s the only thing I actually write very well. For a bit, in the OUAT fandom, I felt a little like a smut jukebox and it was entirely my own fault. But I wrote a lot of fun things and ultimately I enjoy writing smut.

10. Do you write crossovers?

I definitely have in my distant fic writing past, but nothing recently. OUAT almost counts as a canon crossover, given the story of it.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

No.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

No, not really. My great network of fic writing friends have definitely provided excellent guidance and suggestions that have been enormously helpful, and that’s the closest I’ve gotten.

14. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

Lol I feel like this is impossible to answer? My current hyperfixation is Picard/Crusher, and that’s a ship I’ve loved for a very, very long time. So maybe it’s that. But I’ll always hold a place in my heart for Outlaw Queen and Dragon Outlaw Queen (especially for the latter, since I wrote SO MUCH of it). Adama/Roslin is my OTP from back in my LiveJournal days that will also be special to me.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but probably won’t?

Funnily enough, it’s not a Star Trek one, even though that’s my current fandom. The WIP I really, really wish I had finished is Where the Burn Marks Form. I had SUCH PLANS for Dragon Outlaw Queen and Calida and got too intimidated by what I wanted to do to actually write it. Sometimes I think it’s for the best though, because I think any remaining DOQ fans might have been sad about what all was supposed to happen (though it was always supposed to have a happy ending).

16. What are your writing strengths?

Smut. Once upon a time (lol), threesomes in particular. Ironically I used to struggle a bit with writing just two people having sex after writing so much Dragon Outlaw Queen, but I find it not as difficult anymore.

Character voices. Not to brag, but something I pride myself on is getting a character’s voice right. It’s something I work very hard at, and stress a lot over, but generally feel like I succeed.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Literally anything else? You want long, detailed plotty fic? Sorry, can I interest you in a smutty one shot instead. You want something angsty? Not really my style. You want a well-plotted completely alternate universe fic? LOL please, I write fic so I don’t have to world build. Canon compliant or canon divergence or bust, baby.

I write on vibes, and I’m sure sometimes that is blatantly obvious. I have the vaguest of plans whenever I sit down to write something, and I go from there. Probably someday I should try to have actual concrete plans and not just “hmm what if i do this” vibes.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

Lol okay let me piss off the entire Picard/Crusher fandom real quick: IN MY OPINION, it is annoying to write dialogue in another language unless it’s like… blatantly obvious what you’re saying. Very rarely is there a point to it, and it can be easily sidestepped by “blah blah blah,” he said in French. Basic phrases, sure. Pet names, have at it! Several sentences in another language?

Look I don’t speak French. If you put French in your fic, I’m having to pull out Google translate and heaven help me if it’s dirty talk, because now Google is translating “I want to fuck you,” to English from different languages (French, it’s French, I didn’t have this problem in my other fandoms). I wish if people were going to do that, they’d at least make a footnote (I would 100% be willing to find out how to format it) and!!! I think you can still use html to set it up so that when you hover over text, it gives you a little mouseover text where you can have the translation!!! That way I don’t have to one: try and scroll down to the end notes hoping for a translation and thus breaking my immersion as I scroll back up, or at least if it’s a footnote it’ll have an anchor taking me back to the sentence in question.

Sorry rant over, everyone please continue writing however you wish, I will deal. And honestly if you use the same French phrases enough I’ll learn them anyway, so it won’t matter in the long run. This absolutely is not a deal breaker for me when it comes to reading a fic, it’s just a pet peeve.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Um, probably Harry Potter but that is my long-forgotten days.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

trustfall as mentioned above for Star Trek: TNG. With trustfall, it was maybe the second or third fic I wrote for Star Trek (I mean, at least not counting back when I was in my early teens writing for it) and I really think it's just some of my best work? It's a smut fic, but I think there's really, really good character exploration in it. It easily could have just been a fic where Beverly soft dommes Jean-Luc and all you get is that final scene, but I think the build up really makes it worth it. idk idk I have a lot of feels for this fic lolol.

Wishes in the Dark for OUAT. My key party in Storybrooke fic!! aka my Awkward David fic. I think this is one of the best fics I've written, period, for a lot of the same reasons as above. It's 30k, it's got Dragon Outlaw Queen, but more importantly it's got David lusting after Regina and Mal and getting the chance to sleep with them with Snow's permission... and then also Robin joins in and David realizes some things about himself. There's a whoooole side quest of things that was supposed to happen after this story that I never wrote. It's also got some really tender Evil Charming, because I couldn't resist.

And that's all folks! Thanks for reading if you made it this far, I know I really rambled. <3

#text post #man i haven't posted on tumblr like this in forever #idk what to tag anything with lol #fic writer questions

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