The bottom line is not whether or not the plot or the set-ups make sense, but whether or not you are interested in the characters. (If only to be annoyed by them.) Trek has a fair amount of equity built into these characters and the newest versions do mostly manage to trade on that equity while reinvigorating them at the same time. Special effects are gravy. A plot that makes sense, fuggitaboutit.
It doesn’t make sense that the main characters go on away missions into hostile circumstances? You might as well complain that Bond villains don’t just shoot the man. Of course it doesn’t make Vulcan sense. Vulcan stories are boring.
In at least one episode of B5 (I forget which) they send the troops down, and the action shown is largely the main characters getting reports, and reactions and such. Worked quite well. 'Course, that didn’t happen too often, but still, there are ways to handle it.
I’ve got to say that my favorite episode of The West Wing was the one where Josh and Sam and President Bartlett HALO jumped into Qumar and took out the premier. That was awesome!
I disagree, I think a story can make sense AND be interesting. The irrationality of characters are perfectly acceptable reasons for their actions, but not the systematic stupidity of sending mission critical personal into harms way needlessly. Star Trek is largely about technolust, the story and even the characters take a backseat to the technology. It’s so people with headgear can say ‘neutrinos’ in a spittle laden high pitched squeal.
Hey at least my big problem is the away team being the same as the bridge crew.
Well,in this one Pike sent down Sulu (bridge crew but still a peon),Kirk (uncommissioned stowaway) and a redshirt engineer (and if you want to get a structure blowed up get an engineer ).to knock out the drill. But Pike’s got “I’m too old for this shit” written all over him, so captains may choose their own away-team comfort level. Given the choice he signs up for hostage duty, and lets the youngns go atmosphere-diving.
But if the people being sent down are trained experts, then surely they are senior officers? Trained experts usually get promoted, don’t they?
I have an explanation that works for me: Star Trek is supposed to be somewhat Utopian. In this Utopia, people’s lives aren’t valued more just because they managed to work their way up the ranks. Getting a promotion gets you more money (and bigger quarters, maybe), prestige - lots of it - and the chance to change your clothes for the first time in years. The corrollary to that is ‘you must sometimes be on the front line risking your life.’ It’s basically the way senior officers pay for the extra good stuff.
Of course, it also be a matter of evolution. Away missons often involve a redshirt who dies - we all know that, right? That means that senior officers must all be those few who managed to survive away missions for enough years that they got old. They continue getting sent into the dangerzone because surviving is what they’re good at.
And now they’re running out of redshirts - or the redshirts are getting really good at hiding whenever an away mission comes up. ‘Captain, I have once more failed to locate any junior crew members to send to planet Toyletrol. I’m afraid we must take on the tasks ourselves. Again.’
Another explanation could be that, actually, the away missions usually are dealt with by junior officers, but Star Trek only shows us a tiny proportion of all away missions. Since we’re following the lives of the senior crewmembers, we only see the rare occasions that they go on away missions themselves, which leads to the false impression that this is the way away missions always work.
Frak. I hate ‘frak’. The whole damn show is in English except the frakking swear words. Unbelievably stupid.
Also, what the hell is up with all the metaphysic bullshit on BSG? It could have been a great SF show, but no, they had to get god in there somewhere for whatever reason. That is why Star Trek is so much better than shows like BSG. It pretty much leaves god in the past with all the other fairy tales.
Well Marines have senior officers too, and they get sent down. It’s a division of labor. Surely in the Galactic Federation they’d have an explorer corp of trained scientists who specialize in collecting data about new civilizations. Just because you get promoted to Captain doesn’t mean you’re Captain of the Enterprise. The Captain and the XO have specific jobs. They are mission critical because the ship needs a chain of command so you have to protect them both, kind of like you don’t have the VP and the President at the same location in a state of emergency.
This was handled well in BSG, Gaeta was needed in the rebellion because he was the only person technically qualified to run the Galactica. When you are thinking about these deep space voyages and them being gone for months or years at a time you start to realize how quickly they could run out of people who are qualified to be captain of the ship.
In our world people’s lives aren’t valued more because they move up the ranks either, at least not in the way you are thinking. It is not Kirk’s status that makes him more valuable but his function, he has a job that supposedly he is ideally suited to perform. You’re suggesting that a Utopian society would suddenly become incredibly stupid and not recognize that different people have different functions. A Marine signs up to be a Marine.
I don’t think I understand you comment, but I imagine the Muslims are with the Christians - Ideologies left in the past or out colonizing some obscure planet where they can live out their religious dreams and not embarrass the rest of humanity in the eyes of the other races in the federation.
Of course, we only really see the elite scientists and technicians of the Federation. It could be that they are reflecting the same ratio of religiosity as exists today between scientists and others.
Well, according to Roddenbury, organized religion didn’t survive the unification of humanity. I prefer to think that religion is just a non-issue to most humans, or at least to the plot of any episode.
Can, sure. It would be nice. But they do not always and interesting trumps makes sense every time.
As to your claim that ST is about technolust - there you are totally off-base. The technobabble is something that we who enjoy the property tolerate in service of the characters and the spinning of a decent hero adventure yarn to place these characters in (maybe with some clumsy worldview metaphors thrown in here and there and definitely some focus on what we as humans should value and why). Yeah, it would have been better if Rodenberry had foreseen the legs his little Space Western was going to have, and came up with a Tolkeinian backstory in which to place it that writers could stay within and a consistent vocabulary for the magic that they’d use in all future episodes. But he didn’t and ultimately that doesn’t matter too much so long as the fun/interesting characters, the adventure, and the worldview are there.
And perhaps most Star Trek cultures didn’t express explicit God-concepts but they did each have their cultural mythologies that served some of the same functions - transmitting values, identity, etc… sort of like how Trek does for many of us!
Well, Star Trek never picked on the major (real life) religions, but they did do a lot with spiritual and near-religions of other cultures.
For example: the Bajoran’s, and the Emissary. Chakotay and his vision quests, and several episodes exploring Klingon mythology (Worf or Balonna Torres).
generally, it seems the show treated these other culture’s beliefs with some respect. (Nothing that I recall got ridiculed.)
Star Trek is largely about technolust, the story and even the characters take a backseat to the technology. It’s so people with headgear can say ‘neutrinos’ in a spittle laden high pitched squeal.
After I posted it, I realized that that probably wasn’t how it’s spelled.
I like this one. 