prometheus

The Founders
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Posts posted by prometheus

  1. Posted

    I have done a bit of Googling - fascinating!!! Really, it is. I humbly accept your points :klingon:

     

    I recall someone said to George Lucas when Phanthom Menace came out, that despite his best efforts to make the Pre-Original Trilogy ships etc look "Retro" and alomst 50s styled, the technology still ended up looking more futuristic. I'm not totally in agreement with this view but I can see some logic in it. Lucas made an interesting point though that technology - particularly our technology, has developed relatively unfettered by major disasters etc. He proposed that the downfall of the Republic and the subsequent unheaval and rebellion led to technology taking a backward step stylistically and becoming more box like and unfinished.

     

    If you compare Amidala's sleek golden ship to one of teh Y wing fighters from Empire Strikes Back you can see what he means.

     

    Maybe war, political upheaval, famine and natural disasters like Vesuvius all contributed to the Roman Empire and others like it taking a backward step and causing technology to stop evolving.

  4. Posted

    Picard does his "solemn duty" speech which turns out to be a best man speech (ho ho ho) which rang of Riker's speech re Worf's promotion at the start of Generations. Data's double turns up - again! I can't believe Troi got mind raped again! What is it with her? Picard drones on about Picard family history - again! and what a dreamer he was. The ship gets wrecked.

     

    I don't know what is was about this movie - it just seemed a bit unoriginal. Same old same old.

     

    3 out of 10.

     

    Come back kids playing in the straw on the planet of eternal youth - all is forgiven!

  5. Posted

    First, we don't know how old the Dominion really is.

    We have three references to its age: an early Weyoun clone and the female founder mentioned in seperate episodes that the Dominion was two thousand years old, while weyoun 8 made the only reference to the ten thousand year age.

     

    I would say two thousand is more likely.

     

    Who said the Dominion was 10,000 years old in "The Dogs of War"?

     

    Also - 2000 years of development is still 1600 years older than the Federation.

     

    Further - we all know that the Founders weren't really all that bothered with technology - but good thing for the Federation then, wasn't it, that in their 2000 (or 10,000!!!) years they decided to stop developing it at th epoint that was pretty much the same as Federation level.

  6. Posted

    Why was the Dominion's technology on a par with the Federation's when it has been established for over 10,000 years? The Federation's technology has evolved from First Contact to that point "DS9: The Dogs of War" over what? 400 years or so? Sp that means that when the Federation was starting out, the Dominion had been evolveing for 9,600 years. That's really hard to swallow. We've all seen the little ships tottering up to the Enterprise over the years with their antiquated 'lazer technology' etc and that was only a difference of two hundred years or so. The bridge crew often laughed at the minimal damage. Wouldn't Federation technology look like sticks and stones to the Dominion?

  7. Posted

    I suppose one replicator on the Enterprise D was essentially the same as having a complete Mall. Remember Worf was agonising over a wedding gift at what was like an "industrial strength" replicator? Didn't he have to use some of his "credits" to do this? I cannpt recall. I presume that every crew member had credits or something which they could use to replicate stuff at this replicator (unlike the more domestic one in each crew quarters where it seems you could replicate as much food and small items as you like - eg, cups of tea, ice cream, cups. Maybe, in order to control energy consumption, each crew member was given these credits and each item was then valued in credits. And energy patterns for items (particularly larger, complex items) were only programmed into these "industrial sized" replicators.

     

    I know that replicator use was particularly rationed on Voyager given the energy shortages in being so far from home and dillithium supplies. I recall Chakotay making Janeway a pocket watch using his rationed credits or something like that. I noted also from Voyager that they were able to replicate spare parts using some form of "industrial replicator".

     

    Is shopping on line the new replicators? Or rather the equivalent of our time? Identify what you want, spend your credits and it will materialise - allbeit in the post or by delivery!

     

    I'd rather walk round shops - therefore, to return to the original point, the Promenade is superior in this regard. The social element of shoppin gis much better. The ingenuity of Garak the tailor; the songs of the Klingon operatic at the Klingon restaurant; the fun of Dabo girls and potent mixes at the Ferengi Bar; etc etc. Much better than just spedning time by your glorified microwave come Argos catelogue!

  8. Posted

    It was a bit dramatic but then TOS episodes always were. A neighbours' feud was a Planetary War; a computer on an ancient planet was always millions of years old; etc etc. So rather than Uhura just forgetting names for example, or something - she had to have her entire brain wiped clean. And then re-learn everything in a week that it took her 30 odd years to develop in the first place. Like a Micro-meal. Ping! I'm done...

  9. Posted

    I watched, again, TMP and TWOK Director's Editions over the holidays, only this time with the Commentary on and it was pretty interesting. I watched TWOK the whole way through and I am about 30 mins into the Motion Pic. Robert Wise sorta drawls his way through, but I really enjoyed Nick Mayer's anicdotes and production tales. About how he wanted to create a U-Boat feel and how he made Shatner say his lines over and over until he dropped the bravado and umpf he normally injected into every syllable. Curiously, in TMP, Wise along with others involved in making TMP provides some insight in details in the movie like how they created special effects and why they put certain things into certain places.

  10. Posted

    There have been several episodes of Star Trek which have been set in alternate realities - present, past and future. Sometimes these have resulted from freak accidents; sometimes the result of timetravel; sometimes "created" by an aliean life-form.

     

    In some of these episodes, past events have remained the same although historical characters have been replaced with Star Trek figures we know eg DS9's Past Tense. In other episodes, characters from alternate realities join the Star Trek reality eg An alternate Tasha Yar time-travelled back in time from her reality, into the past of the established Star Trek timeline, spawning a half Romulan daughter Sela who showed up in the established timeline; Admiral Janeway appeared in Endgame from an alternate future.

     

    Then there are episodes in which we have seen the original timeline reality ie The Trouble with Tribbles, and then we have seen an alternate version of that reality whereby timetravellers have infiltrated and changed that reality - note for example the "line up" in front of Kirk in Trials and Tribbleations when O'Brien and Bashir replace two other brawling crewmembers for a dressing down.

     

    Some of the concepts have overlapped. Take DS9's episode Children of Time and Enterprise's E2(E squared) for example.

     

    I have tried to draw up a comprehensive list. I have not included all of the timetravel episodes because they arguably have not created an alternate reality in any way. When Quark and Rom went back to 1950s Roswell did they form the basis for the alien landing that we all know and love - or did they substitute the aliens etc that originally formed the myth?

     

    Temporal mechanics - I remember it made my brain hurt at the Academy!

     

    ............................

     

    TOS: Mirror Mirror

     

    TNG: Yesterday's Enterprise, Future Imperfect, Parallels, All Good Things,

     

    DS9: Past Tense, Visionary, Through the Looking Glass, Shattered Mirror, Trials and Tribbleations, Children of Time, Time's Orphan,

     

    VOY: Time and Again, Bfore and After, Year of Hell, Timeless, Shattered, Endgame

     

    ENT: Shockwave, Twilight, E2, Storm Front, In a Mirror Darkily

     

    Which was your favourite? I personally liked the Voyager episodes which gave us a glimpse of alternate futures/realities where, for example, only Chakotay and Kim made it back to the Alpha Quadrant. There we see Captain Geordi LaForge. Also, Endgame where we see aged crewmembers etc.

  13. Posted

    I suspect that next year or the year after, one will be able to buy all three seasons in a BLU-RAY format as one separate box set.

     

    Then they'll start tarting up TNG episodes - released as separate dvd series; then THEY'll be released as BLU-RAY; then DS9'll be released as BLU-RAY, and the cash cow'll keep going and going.

     

    You'll never be done upgrading. It is really just not fair.

     

    Answer me this: why can they not release every episode of Star Trek ever made in one huge BLU-RAY set? Because that'd skip straight to the end of the Monopoly game - past jail etc and the production companies would miss out on all the money they could squeeze out of fans along the way.

     

    So I am hapy to catch episodes on tv as there are always reruns all the time. And I am going to wait whatever number of years it'll take to get my ultimate BLU-RAY box set. In the meantime, my well earned cash can go elsewhere.

     

    I bought the HD-DVD Version of TOS Remastered Season one which is now useless in my BLURAY player...

  17. Posted

    I love ships in Trek and the Dauntless looked fantastic - like a concept car! Even the interiors were cool, for just being some muslin stretched over wooden frames and cheaply backlit.

     

    One thing - when Janeway says "Paris is so laided down with supplies he won't even make half impulse"

     

    Does it matter how heavy the craft is in space? Wouldn't he just use manoevering thrusters in the planet's atmosphere? I mean how does Voyager get to warp 9 at that rate of going? It weighs the same as a cruise ship whilst the Delta Flier is about the size and weight of a speed boat??

  18. Posted

    Taking your points:

     

    1. We are saying then that "the Prophets" allowed the wooden ship (it IS wooden, not decorated in wood) to travel at warp without killing the inhabitants? If that is true then it is a lame way out. Why would they even bother to do that?

     

    2. Solar sails can break; why not back the whole thing up with rockets then, if that is what was used to propel the craft into space?

     

    3. Where was the computer controling the craft? I mean, the whole thing used brass levers and a flippin compass! A compass in space!

     

    sigh. why are people trying to defend the ridiculous?

  19. Posted

    Five years on and I still think it's a stupid idea. You NEED inertial dampers. The TNG technical manual even says that inside the Enterprise D you would not survive warp without them. And how would that ship have escaped Bajor's gravity without some sort of rocket propulsion?

     

    I am not one of "those Trekkies" who miss the whole point of shows. Father and son bonding, yeah yeah yeah - I get it! But they really could've worked on the tech a bot more to make me BELIVE that it could've been possible. If the show has a ridiculous premise to carry the main plot, that distracts the viewer from that plot. I am willing to suspend my disbelief just like anyone - but when I think something is ridiculous, then it's ridiculous.

     

    Sorry - but this show was a stinker!

  20. Posted

    The start of the TNG movies started to do whet the series never dared and that was good. Placing side consoles on the bridge was agreat idea. The bridge of the Enterprise D lacked a certain "business" for being the central control of the ship. The darker lighting was much better too as it gave a more realistic feel tot he ship that was missing from the brightly over lit tv episodes. I liked, in particular, the Captain's ready room bathed in light from the Armagosa star. And Ten Forward being all busy with chatter in the back ground and sunlight streaming through the windows.

     

    Of course, First Contact when one further and gave us a whole new ship and uniforms and banned the little kiddies running about (remember TNG series one! they were EVERYWHERE, Grrr)

     

    Data's emotion chip was the logical development of his haracter and tranformed him into a right royal a hole overnight. So annoying - I felt Geordi's pain. Geordi's eye implants in subsequent filmsThe Duras sisters appeared again - rough Klingons as the villans, how original! Soran was saved by Malcolm McDowell. Again, though, that British accent - how original!

     

    The crash land of the Enterprise D rivalled the destruction of the original ship in Film 3:Search. This, again, was therefore nothing new.

     

    The TOS characters seemed a bit distracted and a bit weak really - like having Shaggy from Scooby Doo turn up with Daphne and Fred.

     

    It worked ok, made money and secured teh future of te movie franchise. Now had they stuck to the rules in First Contact, we may have expected more (Planet of Eternal Life with mystic mumbo jumbo and then Mini-Me in charge of the Romluans, sorry Remans, sorry - what???)

     

    Hmmmm...

  24. Posted

    Looks like this film is going to completley change ST as we know it. :congrats:

    Guinan was El-Aurian so of the two we met, one was a villain.

     

     

    There was an El-Aurian on DS9 - remember he ran a rival casino. The episode was called Rivals and the character was Martus Mazur (I'm sorry but I had to look up Wikipedia to check that - which interestingly said that El-Aurians were not named til that DS9 episode)

     

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El-Aurian