Dark Reality

Oh yeah, I remember (and had a good laugh) when Seven of Nine said the Kazon were unworthy of assimilation.

I do recall hearing that the Borg originated in the Delta Quadrant. But this conflicts somewhat with Earth occupying Sector 001. Unless they have the whole universe mapped out and Earth just happens to be in the first sector by coincidence. If that were the case, Sector 001 would be their first target, as they call the Queen's home "Unimatrix Zero-One (01)". It would make sense they'd want Unimatrix 01 in Sector 001. And the Borg have transwarp, and the network nodes (what Voyager used in Endgame) all over the universe. If the Alpha Quadrant didn't know about the Borg, I would think it's because the Borg for some reason wanted it that way.

The Borg are just full of surprises, though. Like how they don't attack unless provoked. You'd think with Starfleet officers roaming their ship, they'd assimilate one with a tactical position, shut off the shields, and assimilate the whole crew. They did part of that in Voyager's "Unimatrix Zero" episode (assimilated Tuvok and used his codes against Voyager).

For the Borg fans, here's the Wikipedia page on them. It's really extensive!

All Good Things. What a great episode. The only other finale I've seen is Voyager's Endgame, which I thought ended too quickly, and didn't do anything previous episodes didn't. All Good Things was awesome. Endgame was pretty cool too, but the ending felt incomplete.

My message board runs on the same platform software as this. It looks a lot different (as this board has a very custom skin) but is the same software (Invision Power Board). Anyway, I saw VaBeachGuy at their company forums (where I also post) and he had a link to this site in his signature. I've been a Star Trek fan since I was a kid, but never thought to join an ST forum. I checked it out and I like what I see. Trek fans aren't always common on forums, so it's nice to have a forum dedicated to Trek.

Sovereign, easily. My jaw hit the floor when I first saw the Enterprise-E. Of the Enterprises, it's the nicest. And Defiant has nothing on the -E. I like it, I just don't prefer it.

What about Runabout? Was that just a big shuttle? It was what, 3-5 rooms long? I'm really weak on my DS9 knowledge, so I've only seen each one a couple times. But I know it's bigger than Voyager's Delta Flyer, which has the front room just a little bigger than a normal shuttle plus that whole back area. But I always thought the Runabout was a cool ship. Or shuttle.

If the Borg had been around for so long, why didn't they conquer Earth when we were all cavemen? After all, isn't Earth in "Sector 001"?

A possible explanation is that before the Big Bang, there existed a whole other universe which came before, completely different, of course. The Borg were created there, back then. The universe was destroyed somehow, to account for the nothingness that must have preceded the Big Bang. Somehow the Borg must have survived it. That seems impossible, but perhaps the Borg Queen survived, as a super-nanite which retained a lot, but not all, knowledge the Collective possessed in the first universe. It would have retained ship and drone specs, star charts -- they started in Sector 001, why else would it be called 001? Arguably it's their starting sector. Anyway, somehow the super-nanite found a humanoid to assimilate, and from there rebuilt the Collective.

It's IN the console versions, yes... the content is in every version of GTA:SA out now. You need a patch from the Net to unlock it. Without this patch, you CANNOT unlock the sex scenes. Rockstar designed the game that way. They did not intend for players of the final game to be able to access the content. And as it is now, you cannot do so without the Hot Coffee modification.

How do you modify a console game? Normally you can't. Consoles read their games off a DVD-ROM disc. Sure, you could probably copy all the files on it to your hard drive (on your PC), apply the patch, and then burn a new DVD, but then you basically have a copied game. The console won't play it. Unless the console is modified to play copied games. Then you could do it. But ONLY with 1) a computer with a DVD burner, and 2) a modified console. That represents a tiny percentage, probably not 1%, of gamers. Modding a console involves sautering a chip onto the mainboard. I don't know about Ps2 but on Xbox this is all under the hard drive and DVD-ROM drive... so that's a lot of work.

So the console versions shouldn't be affected because better than 99% of GTA:SA Ps2 and Xbox owners have no way of accessing the adult content.

Oh yeah... The Sims, World of Warcraft, and a few others have nude patches too. Tomb Raider had one. This isn't the first time a nude patch has been released. It's just the first time a popular game featured actual sex (and oral sex).

The PC/Xbox game Deus Ex 2: Invisible War seems to make a reference or hint to the Borg. Maybe it's just the Trekkie in me making a bit of a stretch, but it seems appropriate.

I'm not sure how the Borg "started" (is anyone?) but I know they are over 900 years old, according to a Voyager episode in which people are revived from a 900-year stasis and the Borg were around then, so they actually predate the events in Deus Ex 2, which I believe takes place in the mid to late 21st century.

If you're unfamiliar with Deus Ex, JC Denton and brother Paul are the latest in 'nanotech' biomodified humans. They're human, but with implants. Think Seven of Nine. They take injections full of microscopic machines that build components within their bodies that augment their performance. In the first game, you play as JC and try to stop the mother of all government conspiracies. IMHO it's the best PC game ever, though a bit dated. The second one isn't as good, but this is where the suggestion is offered, I suppose. You play Alex D (can be male or female), and of course D is for Denton... a clone, not an offspring. At the end, like the first one, you can choose between several endings, depending upon where you place your alliance.

If you follow JC Denton's advice, you activate a machine which integrates everyone on earth into a collective consciousness, installs the biomods remotely into everyone, and creates a perfect global democracy. Sounds like mass assimilation to me. If you follow the game, JC's motives seem pure and good enough, until his ideas carried out to the ultimate extreme means converting all of Humanity into a knockoff of the Borg.

Like I said, the timelines don't match up; there are numerous paradoxes. But in a universe with infinite possibilities, who's to say events very similar to the Deus Ex games didn't happen on some alien world, and some crazy guy made his world perfect, founded the Borg. It's as good a theory as any, outside an official explanation.

Starfleet-Intrepid, namely Voyager. Well, Voyager with all the latest Federation/Starfleet technology. Pass on the transwarp/quantum slipstream drive if they ever get it working, though... there's such a thing as TOO fast. Enterprise-D and Enterprise-E are very nice... but to pick one, I'd go with Voyager. Especially if you can get manual control, like what Riker does with the Ent-E in Insurrection. Just has a video game joystick pop out... fly the ship by hand... that would be pretty nice. I don't know about pushing a few touch-sensitive buttons and telling the ship where to go. I mean, Tom Paris teaches Naomi Wildman how to fly the Delta Flyer... how challenging/fun can it be to fly a starship?

I voted 'Never again'. UPN has always been garbage IMHO. Whatever Star Trek series, even the ones I didn't like, was far better than their sitcoms. I was actually pretty ticked when Voyager was on. First you have Star Trek Voyager, the latest and IMHO greatest in a franchise which promotes diversity and equality. It's so refreshing to see all these people of different races and species getting along and transcending their differences. Then after Voyager ends, it's an endless stream of sitcoms where every single character is African-American. Nothing against African-Americans at all, but it's just weird. I would have a lot more respect for UPN if Paramount took the diversity from Star Trek and put that in all UPN shows. After all, this IS the 21st century.

You can't really boycott a network by not watching it. So many millions of people watch TV it's not going to matter. Like radio, TV stations get revenue from advertisements. That's your best bet... find an advertiser that advertises a lot on the station you want to target, and let them know that you and XX others are boycotting their product so long as they support that station. I mean, I guess they have the Nielsen ratings or whatever it's called, but I don't know how they track it.

I have the patch on mine. The female is nude, but it looks horrible. You can only see breasts; the woman's private bits are covered by the guy, who is fully clothed. I found it to be pretty lame, actually. I'm leaving Hot Coffee in because it also unlocks the full map and activates most if not all interiors, so you can explore the game more from the beginning.

What's funny is they're applying the AO rating to the Ps2 and Xbox versions. These can't be modded, unless you have a modded console. (Else, how would you change the files? You would end up with a burned San Andreas.) My brother has a modded Xbox, and San Andreas won't even play on it... it's got his modchip blacklisted. So he can't even play San Andreas, let alone mod it with Hot Coffee. I can see them getting in a stir over the PC verison, which is very easy to patch, but not the console versions. Most console gamers haven't got the means to patch their GTA:SA.

And I agree with The King on the Chicago/Capone era. I'm not much into it, but he's right, it is kinda cool... and it just seems it would go hand in hand with GTA. Maybe the game can even be in black-and-white, look like an old movie, to add to the effect. The ONLY problem with that is they'll have a hard time selling a GTA with only blues, classical, jazz, and whatever else was available back then.

What ticks me off is how worked up they're getting over lousy digital sex. What's so bad about SEX anyway? It's a natural act. Violence meanwhile goes unchecked... in The Punisher you can torture people for information. In Deux Ex 2: Invisible War, there's a side quest where you can get into a school with 6-10 little girls running around, and you can kill them without penalty. Yet I've never heard any right-wing groups after those games... then again they didn't sell as well as Grand Theft Auto SA. In GTA there's a limit on the violence you can commit... and there are NO children in the game. Ever notice that? Every NPC in every GTA game, as far as I know, has been an adult. They have school buses, I think (at least in the original GTA) but I've never seen little kids running around. Rockstar just took violence against children out of the equation. I think that is commendable.

Good episode... Voyager is taking shore leave on a planet where the main event is a futuristic fighting match, similar to Ultimate Fighting Championship... aliens fight to knockout or to the death. There's a Hirogen, a Predator (the alien from the movie The Predator... or at least that's what it looked like), a few unknown aliens, and in one scene, Seven fights The Rock as we find out there's a little more to the matches than the crew first thought.

Decent whodunit episode... the whole crew begin having Vietnam-style flashbacks about their supposed participation in a very nasty and brutal war in which they killed 80-some-odd men, women, and children. VERY weird.

Good, funny episode... if you can stand the Doctor's singing, that is. If you can't, best to just skip this one, because this one's about a race that starts out thinking Voyager is worthless and inferior until they hear the Doctor sing... their society doesn't even know what art is, let alone music. The Doctor becomes a superstar overnight.

Now this has to be the best one so far. It seems to take off on the same idea as the Star Trek TNG epsiode "Inner Light" in which Picard lives a man's full life in 25 minutes, long my favorite TNG episode, and now that I'm reading about ST online, finding it's generally a fan favorite. "Blink of an Eye" takes the same idea a step further. It's not as good, yet good for the same reasons. The plot is much simpler, though.

Voyager comes in contact with a planet that looks like nothing you've ever seen, and each second that passes on Voyager is a day down on the planet. Voyager gets trapped in the atmosphere, and the episode begins with cavemen seeing a new star in the sky. They worship all the stars, and Voyager is the brightest by far, so they think it's the leader of their gods. The Prime Directive goes (albeit unintentionally) right out the window as this society bases its whole existence around Voyager, from what little they know and what all they assume about it.

Again, best Voyager episode so far. I give it a 6.

Here's a more casual episode about Holodeck romance between Janeway and a bartender in an Irish town in a program Paris wrote. Fun to watch, but not very exciting.

This is a good episode, for many of the same reasons 4x23 "Living Witness" was good. And that's considering I dislike Barclay's character, particularly in this episode. Barclay was a very common guest but not quite regular on Star Trek: TNG; he worked in Engineering with Geordi in some episodes. Enterprise days in the past, he's now working for Starfleet's research center, deemed a little crazy, and is completely obsessed with Voyager. He has an idea to make a micro-wormhole to the Delta Quadrant to pipe a transmission through, but Starfleet, including Admiral Paris, are skeptical and refuse to even try.

I wasn't too fond of this one. It's mainly a Seven episode; she uses Borg technology to assimilate ships' logs faster, and starts dreaming up conspiracies. Yawn. The really cool Voyager conspiracy was done in "Latent Image" back in Season 5. And I was really looking forward to this one, too.

Here's one of those epsiodes with a "good guy" alien race and a "bad guy" race and things wind up different than they appear. (I remember a ThunderCats episode (1980s sci-fi cartoon) "Good and Ugly" that played off this theme.) Voyager finds a wormhole network but are chased out by the owners, and find the remains of a 900 year old civilization in stasis tubes, and not all these guys are nice.

Now this is a good episode! Voyager finds an anomaly which swallowed a small NASA ship in 2032. By my account this is the first instance at hinted feelings between Chakotay and Seven. They start out at each other's throats, but how the experience changed Seven, I think really impressed Chakotay. This is a nice new development.

I agree about the ones young girls wear... that's just wrong. "Future porn star"? I've never seen that, but I've seen grade school girls wearing the "porn*" shirts. :P That's just beyond wrong.

The "If you can read this the [female dog] fell off" is meant to be worn by a biker. It doesn't make sense if you don't see it on a dude on a motorcycle.

http://www.tshirthell.com has some really funny ones. I won't quote them but let's just say the Olsen twins have sued them a couple times. They're always making shirts making fun of whatever tragedies are in the news. It's a great site though, they have obscene wrapping paper... and stuff for babies! I like the one that says "I can kick your baby's *buttocks*". It's so wrong, yet I'd love to get one for my [future] child...

This episode was kind of silly. And it's "Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy"; no commas appear in the title. Minor difference. This episode was mentioned in another thread, about the funniest episode. I was excited to see it, but ended up a little disappointed. The premise was cute though. A hostile alien force, hidden, can't penetrate Voyager to scan it. When they finally find a way in, they watch the Doctor's daydreams and interpret it as how Voyager really is. Such as when the Doctor takes command of Voyager and blows up a Borg ship (sphere, not cube) with a fantasy weapon called the "photon cannon".

This episode apologizes to the old-skool Trekkies for not having enough Klingons in Voyager. Torres is almost killed on an away mission, and starts having strange appearances. She has a near-death experience, briefly seeing the barge of the dead, which the Klingons believe carries dishonored warriors to the Klingon Hell. This doesn't meet ALL the criteria for being a "Klingon episode" per se, but it's the closest thing Voyager has so far.

Interesting episode. Paris finds a shuttle he falls in love with at a space dump, and no one voices concern over the neural interface (kind of like what Adm. Janeway had in "Endgame") until Paris starts acting funny. Such as stealing parts from other parts of the ship to get his shuttle space-ready. Alice is the name of the AI on the shuttle.

Two interesting points here. At the end (this isn't a spoiler) Torres gives Paris a "get well card" from Naomi Wildman. Why would she give him a get well card? Since she's been a child (as opposed to a baby) numerous crew members have been injured... no get well card. After a couple seconds it occurred to me. Because Paris let her fly the Delta Flyer back to Voyager a few episodes back. That HAS to be why. Otherwise the scene is useless... If you ask me they made a point to show that she appreciated that beyond falling asleep in his lap on the way back. Second point, Alice is the name of the AI... There is an AI in development called Alice. Google "Alicebot" sometime. There are a few clients you can download. I did this maybe 1-2 years ago... the program is like a chat or IM program, but you're talking to the AI. Very cool. It's not as smart as, say, the Doctor, but for being some 300 years prior to the 24th century, it's pretty advanced. :P

It's "Tuvix" all over again! Remember that episode from the first few years where Tuvok and Neelix are "merged" in a transporter accident, and when they come up with the treatment, "Tuvix" doesn't want to go back to the way they were? Or "Latent Image" from Season 5 where the Doctor finds out his memory was erased and Janeway wants to erase it again?

Same scenario here. This time Tuvok and Neelix are on an away mission and Tuvok is attacked. Neelix gets him back in time for the Doctor to save him, and when he regains consciousness, he has no idea who he is. His recovery entails him becoming a cheerful and emotional guy, and when they come up with the treatment, of course he doesn't want to go back. You've seen this twice before, but I like this one a little better than "Tuvix" (a lot more really, "Tuvix" was kind of annoying) but "Latent Image" was a little better.

In this episode we see the Delta Flyer has two rooms. Didn't Runabout on DS9 have more rooms? I swear, I've seen every episode since Delta Flyer was built, and I've never seen that back room before. Nor have I heard a back room mentioned. Oh well, it's bigger than I thought.

Roxann Dawson directs, and unless she very briefly appears, we never see Torres in this episode. So the cast information above is sort of wrong to list her. :P

Oh, and I resent the article saying Janeway isn't beautiful. I wouldn't go so far as to say she's the most attractive woman on the ship, but is somewhat attractive, as far as women her age go. A woman doesn't have to be under 25 to be beautiful. I wouldn't consider a long-term relationship with a woman that age, but I do give credit where credit is due.

HRH The King - I disagree with a few of those points. Not sure why these are spoilers, but I will follow suit.