Perhaps but the ST Voyager scripts are often pure tripe. You can tell that the people writing the scripts are just hacking them out to a schedule and have no more ability to write good, compelling sci-fi than a chimpanzee. It really is mostly just new age PC eyewash all dressed up in spandex and gizmos.
I’ve only seen it a few times, so this opinion sure isn’t expert…I was suprised at the bland, ho-hum tone of it. Of course the effects are a million times better than the original, but the high-gloss enamel doesn’t compensate for blandness.
The possibilities are so rich, for interpersonal, interspecies issues and conflicts, what happens to a sense of mission during isolation, the tang of fear/curiosity…
Nada. Zip. Zilch. Gene Rodenberry, bless his orbiting ashes, would have had a sense-of-wonder field day w/ this! Talk about scope for fascinating ideas, conflicts, possiblities–and instead it’s just a routine cop/hospital drama w/ thin SF trappings.
Mostly it’s a pitiful waste of potential.
Veb
IMHO: Deep Space Nine is a remake of the seventies-tv series Love Boat. Right to the welcoming of the aliens in the firts minutes of every episode, to the “cute” daughter -erm- son of Captain Benjamin.
Still IMHO" I love Voyager and especially when Seven contradict Janeway’s inconsequent Hallmark-feelgoodwisdom with pure logic. Remember when Seven decided wanted to kill the wounded Species (forgot number?.
On the one hand, I’d have to agree that my chances of sitting down and writing a passable script are pretty low. On the other hand, it seems to me that I (and most everyone else) have a better gauge of what’s good or not than a lot of TV and movie writers and bigwigs do.
To wit:
After UA made the execrable “License to Kill,” they didn’t come out with a Bond movie for a very, very long time. When UA was finally in financial straits, they brought in a new chief exec (who is, incidentally, Meg Tilly’s husband) who told them that the way to make money was to make a new Bond movie. They made GoldenEye, it was fabulously successful, and everyone was happy. Why, exactly, did they need someone to tell them to make a Bond movie? Don’t they know that people like Bond? It seems to me that when LtK flopped, some bigwig decided that Bond was a dinosaur and people just didn’t like Bond movies anymore, when in reality everyone knew that the movie just sucked- and it sucked mainly to the extent that it was a revenge movie rather than a traditional Bond movie.
You can see much the same logic operating with regard to the Batman movies. Why all this talk of how the franchise was killed by Joel Schumacher? If they were to make a movie of The Dark Knight Returns, it would without a doubt be successful, particularly if they were able to hire Clint Eastwood as Batman. But “Batman and Robin” flopped because Schumacher made a crappy movie, and no one seems to realize that just because the last Batman movie was campy and ridiculous doesn’t mean that the next one has to be.
With regard to Star Trek, I find it a little odd that they made a movie which involves the ST crew saving a bunch of vicariously pacifistic luddites from destruction. At the very least, they could have discussed whether the pacifism of the Luddites was really all that honorable, if they depend on others to do their shooting for them. But would Roddenberry have had us sit through an explanation of how good it is to say “screw science” and sit around gazing into our navels? No! Roddenberry would have had Piccard explaining how science isn’t just a tool for making guns, but is a way to learn about amazing new ideas to contemplate.
At the time ST:Insurrection came out, a friend of mine pointed out to me that ST has a lot of plot points which they simply do not return to. We could have a movie about the Romulan/Vulcan reunification. But hey, maybe Nimoy doesn’t want to be in it, so let’s forget that for now. What about the “bearded Spock” universe? If they want another ST:IV, they could just have folks go to the bearded Spock universe, and I think the fans would probably love it. And when will we have a movie centering around Q?
And what is it with all these aliens? ST:TOS had a lot of recurring alien species which have never appeared in the new series. Where are the Andorians? For the sake of consistency, at the very least, they should have the Andorians show up. But instead, they introduce new species with increasingly elaborate foreheads.
And why the Ferengi? Someone, at the start of ST:NG, decided that they needed new villains, so they came up with short, snaggletoothed guys with whips. Huh? Whips against phasers? I always found the Ferengi to be annoying rather than menacing, and, to their credit, the writers figured this out after only a year or two.
So, in summary, it seems to me that the people who make decisions about the shows are- for whatever reason- out of touch with what people generally like or dislike about the show. Think of Marvin from the SuperFriends: kids didn’t like him, but the execs were convinced they they loved him. I can only hope that the studios realize sooner or later that it’s in their best interest to cruise IMHO and the Pit to figure out how people really feel about their products.
-Ben
Y’know, I wouldn’t care about the Universal Translator if it weren’t for two things…
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It’s described as having a pre-loaded database of only a few hundred languages. So how the hell is is translating Talaxian (or whatever it is) if they’ve never encountered it before?
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Inconsistency of use. The Federation translators are supposed to be in those little nametags, correct? Well, there was one episode (“Nemesis”, I think) where Chakotay lost his lil’ gizmo. And he was still communicating with the natives (well, syntax was a little skewed…). In addition, there are several episodes that have a character describing the meaning of a word in another language (often Klingon), and the translator passes the word by. ??? If it’s supposed to be translating, why doesn’t it translate?
The whole thing would have been better left unaddressed. After all, we already have to swallow Warp Drive, Transporters, and Replicators… why do they have to make things far more complicated than they are by trying to explain something that doesn’t need to be explained???