I just remembered that the Federation is more than a little leery of genetic engineering due to the Eugenics War and I can’t imagine they’re too fond of their officers becoming cyborgs with their current situation with the Borg either. The only way this could work with a UFP citizen is if it’s a fugitive and would the Straight Dope / Adams take one in as a trusted crewmember or allow him free access to the computers? I doubt it.
Maybe what we instead try is someone that was born with massive genetic birth defects and required extensive surgeries to make them a functioning member of society and, in the process, made him or her an unintentional ūbermensch. Think of a mixture of Geordi and Bashir but magnitudes more pervasive and having a superiority complex to match.
This almost sounds like a retread of Seven, though.
It has a better precedent than that: Captain Christopher Pike.
You’re right about the Federation and the anti-gen-en attitude they have. I wasn’t going to mention it, because such a character needn’t be a Federation officer, and they’re not in Federation space.
Instead of someone born with birth defects, consider someone with a slowly advancing incurable adult disease (degenerative bone condition, special alien virus, etc). This makes the situation an ongoing development. It would have great parallels to real life, too, in the arguments for stem cell research. The two things which could cure this person are a) genetic engineering and b) bionics, both of which the Federation won’t countenance, and they are too conservative to consider the potential benefits.
Nah. Pike isn’t similar at all. He was a vegetable that could only communicate via blinky lights and was in futuristic iron lung. I was thinking someone more like the Six Million Dollar Man, which is why I made the Seven comparison.
As for the eugenics angle, it would probably need to be done on a human to make it resonate the most and since the only human characters are going to be on a Starfleet vessel, he or she is going to have be a Federation citizen.
That said, your idea is superb. Flits around that perfectly and allows us to do exactly what we need. Kudos.
While an interesting character, Garak, in the grand scale of things, is just another Cardassian and a hasbeen spy. If he were so important a person, he never would have been exiled and/or would have found a way to worm his way back into the good graces of his government.
That he was and did not doesn’t speak highly of his standing.
I didn’t say he was similar; I said he was a better precedent. He could be used as a perfect example of the Federation’s niggling morals about the use of certain techniques to fix people. On the one hand you have Pike, who’s useless, and on the other Seven – and Khan Singh.
Thanks. Once everybody else has got done using it for target practice, we’ll see if it still stands up.
When did they say Trip was from Florida? I didn’t watch much of the show, but the only mention of Florida I know of was where they mentioned that his sister lived in Florida. My sister lives in Oklahoma. My brother lives in Arizona. Neither state is the one where I’m from (indeed, neither of them are from those states either). The only character references I’ve seen of him seemed to imply he was from Texas (granted, I’m limited to an episode where they were watching water polo and Trip was cheering for the Texans and Archer for the Californians)
Holodeck: We can keep it if we keep it in moderation. No holodeck gone awry episodes, but occasional use of it can still be handy for building characters (ie: what they’re interested in).
Multi-ship force: I still say that if there is a multi-ship force, they should all be jack-of-all trade ships to varying degrees, and have them exploring seperately, meeting up only on occasion as circumstances merit. A Defiant wouldn’t be much use in this role, but could be called in with The Cavalry from the Alpha quadrant if the post-digested biomass hits the air circulator.
If you have a force including various alien races, you would still have them operating more or less independently, though possibly with representatives from other groups. You could build some plots based on how the representatives fit in on the other ships. No Vulcan science ships that require the constant shepherding of the other ships, and no ships that serve no purpose but to escort the other ships. This is Star Trek, not BattleStar Galactica (a show I also like). We can still have the ocassional episode with a dedicated science vessel that is poking around some planet or gaseous anomaly or what not, but don’t make it a regular or even a semi-regular ship. That said, I have no problem with seeing the same science ship from time to time, just for consistency’s sake.
Actually, I’m kinda curious as how a Klingon science mission goes:
“Sir! We have discovered a sentient species on the planet below. They are a pre-gunpowder fuedal society that practices armored melee combat!”
“Excellent! We shall do honorable battle with them to see if they are worthy of the secret of warp drive! To the transporter room! Q’PLAH!”
I have a great idea for a holodeck-gone-awry B story that has nothing to do with security protocols or a technological malfunction of any kind. The holodeck, in fact, works perfectly, and nobody breaks it or reprograms it or abuses it in any way, and the person going into the holodeck knows perfectly well that he’s going there for his simulated training and promotional testing. …his problem is that he’s in there so much running tests in the artificial re-creation of the ship and crew, he’s starting to have trouble remembering whether he’s in it or not.
Apart from that, yeah. No more “Ship in a Bottle.” Very good episode… been done.
Definitely agree here. As I said previously, the important thing will be to give the ships personality, so we know that one particular ship’s captain and crew will likely behave one way, and another ship behaves differently. That’s why I suggested the Kirk/McCoy/Spock triumvirate, imposing artificial restrictions on the ships rather than physical limitations of design. There’s more personality (in my view) in a ship that can fight well but won’t always, and a ship that can’t fight well no matter what the captain wants; or a ship that can explore and contact new species but doesn’t because the captain is too busy scanning for dangers, or analyzing archaeological finds, or refitting the ship with whatever Gamma Quadrant technology he comes across.
Yeah, me too, actually. Do they get their technology through plunder and conquest, or through treaty (like the infamous cloaking device) or through actual research?
Klingon Scientist (to his invention): Work! I command you. My will is stronger! Today is a good day to work! (smashes components to fragments) I salute your courage. You have defeated me for today. But I will find an invention that works, and on that day I will regain my scientific honor! (roars)
I would really prefer we leave holodecks completely out of these missions. I know it would be great for our Klingon Panda, but hey, I’m just one of the people who find the whole thing an incredibly overused “neat” idea. Irish Towns, Vegas Clubs, Holms of London – they just seem to be an artificial way to take us out of the reality – a neat toy, but pretty much the top of the annoying TNG tech list. Unless we can limit it to training only use, I’m soundly in favor of NO Holodecks on this mission.
This is the only way I see the multi-ship idea working.
Maybe – overall, I’d like to see the whole thing much more C. Columbus-like away from the easy Federation answers.
Me too.
This reminds me of my old “Klingon Ambassador Training” skit wherein the appropriate answer to nearly everything was ritual combat or oppression of said species. (it is pre-TNG old).
For what it’s worth, the ships I suggested minus the Defiant were all multipurpose, as are most Federation ships. There’re some exceptions, like the Oberth, Defiant, and Prometheus classes but, for the most part, there’s no real difference between the Excelsior, Galaxy, Nebula, Constellation, and Sovereign classes except levels of technology so far as we know.
I’d just prefer ships that aren’t cutting-edge (no Intrepids, Sovereigns, Akiras, etc) and that we’ve only seen glimpses of, like the the ships I suggested: the Nebula and Ambassador. Hell, I’d love to see a http://ditl.org/gpaf/GCentaur2.jpghttp://www.shipschematics.net/startrek/images/federation/frigate_centaur.jpg , personally. It only showed up in one episode and was obviously a kitbash but I love the look of it and it is one of my favorite designs.
Ah, but if I want someone to watch my back…rather, if I want to pay someone to watch your back with a sharp instrument, it would be Garak. ^ :dubious: ^
Garak was a free lance spy. The whole tailor thing was an excuse to put himself on terak’nor. He manages to peddle information to all sides of the conflict, and profit thereby. Sure, every Cardassian who came by berrated and insulted him, but that’s because he left thier fascist system. If you were replaying Casablanca on DS-9, Garak would be the person you actually could get the letters of transit from.
I’d like to see the Holodeck being used for training; We get to see a bit of that done in some episodes, but for what must be a highly useful teaching aid, it really doesn’t get used in that capacity much.
As for ships, can I put my vote for the Steamrunner class? They just look damn cool.
The ambassadorial convoy can add some interesting things to a show, but on its own I don’t see a wide variety of potential plots.
a) Engineering new cabin space for aliens with different environmental needs: excellent as raw science fiction, but probably not engrossing enough for a prime time audience. This is a once-in-a-while storyline, not a staple, in my view.
b) New aliens meeting and interacting with the existing aliens: fine the first few times, but we’d be re-introducing the viewing audience to characters they already know.
c) Ongoing diplomatic efforts: fantastic idea as one of several interwoven threads of the show, probably not enough bright explosions and special effects to warrant the budget of a full Trek show on its own. As a central premise, would probably be “talky.” If the show were confined to diplomatic contacts, a planetbound show would be much cheaper to film.
d) Spreading science and understanding: TNG did the occasional “wow, neato” show where people were exposed to a technology they didn’t know was possible: “First Contact,” with Riker disguised as an alien; the one with the pre-Vulcan Mintakan civilization; the one where Worf’s brother stows a pre-warp village on the holodeck; and a painfully bad one where 20th century Earth people were brought from stasis. Even if it’s our people learning from theirs, “gee whiz” only goes so far. Once or twice I could see, but as a central theme it needs more fleshing out.
What do you envision as the type of stories you’d tell with the idea, BMalion?
That’s one interpretation but not mine, at all. He has some contacts and a bit of influence left over from his days with the Order and being the son of Enabrin Tain but I see him much more as a Cardassian Quark than a man of significant power.
Anyway. How about some more characters? Or plot lines? The ship models can come later too.
I’d like to see a junior officer or ensign, not in the science division, who is a major amatuer xenobiology nerd. Always had really wanted a career in xenobiology but family pressures or grades kept him out. Now it is just his passion and every away trip he’s always distracted by some of the species and how they’ve adapted to their niches. He hangs around the doctor trying to see his samples kept for medicinal purposes (much to the doctor’s annoyance). For a few a shows it’s a running gag, like the kid with ADD who is always distracted, “OOO! Lookit at this example of Grafflixana! Convergent evolution makes it very similar to the Opazemati of …” “Shut-up Ensign!” but a few episodes later he picks up on something that turns out to be a major clue that something on that planet isn’t as it should be …
Klingon Panda’s arc should include the expectation that she is going to discover her humanity and accept it, but have it go the other way. Her shipmates keep expecting her to become more human, and try to get her to become one of them (especially our human first officer), and she just gets more disgusted with them. Eventually she is able to do something that earns her the respect of her Klingon captain and in later episodes becomes a major nemesis of the Federation ship’s efforts. She in particular is disgusted by the efforts to repair our genetically damaged human-nonhuman (?)ubermensch(?)… “He is gentically weak, a disgrace to his bloodline. We (Klingons) would kill him. His existence is a dishonor.”
And some play against types … Garek was fun because he was against expectations for a Cardassian and gave the species more depth. Some more cultural and personality variations among the Cardassians and Klingons would play well. The Cardassian science vessel being mostly female could help allow for that. Would a male military contigent on-board be subserviant to the science based captain? Would they have some conflict of power sharing and approach? How much of this do we get to see?
