caldrail's Blog

Uh, not to point out the obvious...but O'Brien was the engineer in the transport room in TNG...not Scotty. Sheesh, what kind of trekkie are you???

I hate to point it out the obvious Doc, but there's more than one engineer in Star Trek. Secondly, O'brien was not the only guy operating the transporter. So did Tasha Yar, Worf, Jordie, the good Captian Picard, and a few other extras. Also, Scotty made an appearance in STNG too.

 

Also, there's no implied connection between Scotty's expertise with the transporter and any event featured in STNG.

 

Now you know what kind of trekkie I am!

Still, bad form to talk about TNG and have Scotty beam you up. Tsk tsk!

 

(This is also conceding that you're prolly a bigger Trekkie than I am...I liked TNG immensely, but none of the other series.)

DS9 was of a comparable standard. Voyager seemed a bit wishy-washy and lacked the same sense of reality about it, and the Enterprise series never found that magic at all.

For me, DS9 was passable, but never held my interest. Voyager...I'm sorry, but the captain of a starship cannot look like she's always going to cry. Enterprise I never did watch, just never wanted to.

The star trek genre was borne out of nostalgia for the original, and STNG was a worthy successor. As things wore on though the ideas were getting a bit thin, storylines were getting derivative, and by Enterprise it had devolved to an ordinary US sci-fi series relying on fans being familiar with the original. Star Trek had run out of steam.

I agree, and the death of Gene Roddenberry really kicked the life out of the franchise. He was the guiding force on TNG and had some involvement in DS9...but you could see the void that his passing left in the franchise.

The same thing happened with Terry Nation. He was involved in the early years of Dr Who (he invented the Daleks), Blakes Seven, and probably other stuff too. He had vision like Gene Roddenberry, albeit somewhat less rosy. Gerry Andersen, although he started in puppet shows, went through Fireball XL5, Stingray, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, Joe 90, UFO, and Space 1999. His vision of a 60's style over-engineered technological society was brilliant back then, and I still have a fondness for those old shows.

 

But in each genre, its largely the product of one mans vision isn't it?

I'd say so. Although sometimes one person's vision is too much...aka George Lucas and Star Wars. I still say that the best one is Empire, and the new ones don't even cut mustard.

Star Wars? The original concept was a sci-fi fairy tale, and it is. Episode IV is all about young farm hands and princesses and castles and rogues and spells and.. well you get the picture. The sequels were there to make more mioney from a succesful film, and the later three prequels even more so, with the extra desire to impress people with special effects (a sure sign of poor plot and screenplay) and a more scientific rationale placed on top of the mystical original. The incredible stunts, frantic pace, and constant wisecracks of the episodes I to III get a little tiring in my view.

I'm not denying that...just saying that when George Lucas doesn't have complete control over everything from script to cut, the product is better. Empire and the Indiana Jones series are testament to that.

Yeah, I sort of know what you mean. The original screenplay for Rambo 1 had the colonel shoot Rambo dead right at the end, on the basis he realises that this guy coming to pieces in the wreckage of the police station will never adjust to civilian life and he feels responsible for training the man to that state. Stallone however had some creative influence (he's listed in the credits as such) and demanded his character survives, so he could make two (sorry, three) sequels that are teeth clenchingly awful. A shame. The original really isn't a bad film at all.