[samwiseb]

Originally Posted by horatio

I totally agree, what matters most is that the story is good.

About the Klingons, if I remember correctly the problem of the interrogation scene has is that it reveals Nero's motives too early in the story. So perhaps the scene has been cut out because of that and not because they have been unhappy with the Klingons?
In my opinion the little we saw of them indicated that they are kind of a mixture of the previous two versions of Klingons, cunning and brutal at the same time.

The JJ Klingons were awesome. Not to mention probably the most 'original' Klingons I think we'd seen since the stately Meyer Klingons of TUC. I'm hopeful that he'll stick with them. Although he might change them again just on account of having the freedom to do so (the prior scene having been deleted and all).

As long as we steer clear of the brash, jerky Ka-pa-cha! Klingons from before (I'd rather watch DS9 for that), I'm cool with more Klingons. They were sort of inevitable anyway.

[horatio]

Originally Posted by martok2112

I have to say, I like how the Klingons were portrayed in the deleted scenes of Trek '09. Indeed both cunning and brutal. They spoke in thl'ngan, but when they spoke in English, there was something more ferocious in their understatedness than in their previous "brash" styled talk.

I like the TNG Klingons but you can hardly picture them in intelligence services precisely because of this bluntness.
It's like with a father, if he loses his tempers, starts shouting and beats you this is painful but there is something ridiculous, something impotent about it.
Real authority works differently, the threat is stronger than the execution.

Originally Posted by samwiseb

In a way, get used to it already. I don't know why you act like it's news, or like it's just me, when there's nothing I said here that hasn't been said, by a majority of frustrated fans, ever since well before ten years ago when rumor of a TCW on the next ST series (ENT) started circulating. And nothing I haven't said myself since well before ST09, for that matter. Yes, we both know how much I think that movie 'sucks'... as well as TVH, which I've often cited as being tied with TWOK as my favorite Trek.

It is unfortunately my impression that the mediocre outweighs the good. And impression is unfortunately as good as fact, short of getting 'technical' and counting off the exact number of (in this case) good-to-bad TT eps... (which wouldn't work for me anyway, since I don't plan on ever re-watching the mediocre stuff again. That's the pesky thing about impressions: once solidified, they're pretty much impossible to be proven wrong. Everyone 'knows' Kirk is a womanizer who loves green women in particular, whereas not many people care that 'technically' Kirk often had no other (proactive) recourse but to seduce the cute chick, or that 'technically' there was only one known occasion in which the chick in question happened to be green).

If you're recycling a used idea, have the intuition to know how it will be received. More often than not, they'll forgive you if you've got the goods. But if you lack intuition and need to get technical ("well, I show it's been at least [x] number of eps since our last TT story, so 'maybe' we haven't burned it out yet, and we all know how much the fans love those anyway..." [yeah, they love them because that's what you keep spoon-feeding them]), then the odds are probably already 50/50 against you having the goods... and if you didn't have them then the idea is, in fact, burned out.

I'd label what you call impressions either Trek myths or prejudices.
About the former and to stick with your example, isn't the more contemplative ShatKirk at least as interesting as the more playful one?
About the latter, I refused to watch TOS until a few years ago. It was this corny, pathetic first Trek show that ran on Saturday evenings, a dim shadow of TNG. Then I forced myself to try to get into it and was pleasantly surprised that without the horrible German translation the show was fine in the English original.

I am the first one to agree that the Temporal Cold War was a bad idea (Although not a recycled one as the idea was new. Perhaps it would have better fitted into late 24th century decadence Trek aka VOY.) for a prequel series. It's kind of antithetical to the very premise of the show. But ignoring the concept, have the actual episodes been bad? Nope, it was the usual Trek mixture of a few good ones, a bunch of mediocre ones and a few stinkers.
To get back to TOS, how many good TOS episodes are there? Ten or fifteen? Trek is most of the times mediocre. I guess that even in one's most favourite season of one's most favourite Trek show one is hard-pressed to find more than eight or ten good episodes.
To check my own preferences, I love TNG's second season but wouldn't call more than eight stories (Elementary, Dear Data; The Measure Of A Man; Contagion; The Royale; Time Squared; Pen Pals; Q Who; Samaritan Snare) actually good.

[samwiseb]

Originally Posted by horatio

I like the TNG Klingons but you can hardly picture them in intelligence services precisely because of this bluntness.
It's like with a father, if he loses his tempers, starts shouting and beats you this is painful but there is something ridiculous, something impotent about it.
Real authority works differently, the threat is stronger than the execution.

This. Although I do think the TNG Klingons were subtle enough, at first. And they had more culture than any of their TOS/TOS-Revisited counterparts, at least prior to TUC. But somewhere after TNG-S4, they just started getting louder and more generic. Though they still by and large had more individuality than in TOS.

I'd label what you call impressions either Trek myths or prejudices.
About the former and to stick with your example, isn't the more contemplative ShatKirk at least as interesting as the more playful one?
About the latter, I refused to watch TOS until a few years ago. It was this corny, pathetic first Trek show that ran on Saturday evenings, a dim shadow of TNG. Then I forced myself to try to get into it and was pleasantly surprised that without the horrible German translation the show was fine in the English original.

I am the first one to agree that the Temporal Cold War was a bad idea (Although not a recycled one as the idea was new. Perhaps it would have better fitted into late 24th century decadence Trek aka VOY.) for a prequel series. It's kind of antithetical to the very premise of the show. But ignoring the concept, have the actual episodes been bad? Nope, it was the usual Trek mixture of a few good ones, a bunch of mediocre ones and a few stinkers.
To get back to TOS, how many good TOS episodes are there? Ten or fifteen? Trek is most of the times mediocre. I guess that even in one's most favourite season of one's most favourite Trek show one is hard-pressed to find more than eight or ten good episodes.

The Kirk example I gave is a myth, however it has stuck. You can't unglue it with facts, because people simply tune out and it continues to stick. I do prefer the contemplative Kirk though, and I think most fans would agree.

TOS is interesting batting average-wise, because it's three seasons pretty cover the whole spectrum of quality ST has delivered ever since. TOS-S1 I would consider to be ST's strongest season, although that is not without bias as the freshness of it is a major factor. TOS-S3 is easily the worst season in of all ST, and probably even a thorough marathon-ing of VOY (I've never been able to watch more than 75% of it at the most) would not change that opinion. TOS-S2 is maybe slightly above average, perhaps comparable to the less-even 'transitional' years of DS9.

I think a 'good' season can actually deliver up to 15-18 good eps, even though only 8-10 of them may be classified as great. And I do agree there's much to be said for TNG S1-2, with their 16 good eps total, over any two seasons of VOY or ENT which may offer as many good eps combined.

As series, I suspect DS9 is the most consistent for me overall, followed by TNG. The franchise 'drop-off' for me starts with TNG post-S4, with DS9 being the only exception to the trend. ENT improves significantly in its final season, but never quite stops feeling 'reheated' in my opinion.

Ultimately I hate to see creative burnout happen to any series. I'm more of the die-young-stay-pretty philosophy. The TCW never impressed me, because I don't feel like it was about anything. You could probably swap the eps in any order, because it all seemed to amount to taking crewman Daniel's word that doing X accomplished Y. I never saw a shape to it, or got the impression that Enterprise had enough of a vantage point into the temporal plot to determine what the linear progression was (are we close to the end? Daniel will tell us when we are, if the ratings don't help him decide). I don't think it's a myth or prejudice to note that certain story ideas have been burned out. It might not seem fair if people's collective opinion (that this has happened) is not supported fully by statistics, however it's still the artist's responsibility to ensure his audience doesn't perceive the work has reached that point. It doesn't mean nothing new can be done with old story devices, but by that point the creators have to know they're fighting a steeply uphill battle.

[horatio]

Linear progression doesn't exist in the case of a temporal war.
Seriously, I totally agree that it felt detached from the fate of the crew and that the institutionalized aspect of time travel with temporal investigators, temporal agents and so on is wrong.

But I have to ask again, what has this to do with time travel in general? I am not advocating to convert Trek into Doctor Who, one or two time travel stories per season respectively three out of eleven in the case of the movies doesn't seem to be an abundance of time travel.
I would not wanna miss episodes like All Good Things, Cause and Effect or In a Mirror Darkly. Or think about stories like Children of Time, E² or Timeless which are character-focused. In these episodes time travel acts as a dramatic lense that intensifies love respectively obsession.

As long as the technicalities and the explanations are kept in the background, there is nothing wrong with time travel. Think about the three movies, they all perform it effortlessly. While the journey in and of itself is pretty long in TVH it is compensated for by the funky aspect of warping around the sun.
Among the four homage stories Flashback is the weakest precisely because the explanation part is far too large. A story editor should have told the writer to cut the virus crap and get back to Sulu.

[samwiseb]

I'm all for time travel, as long as there's a real human drama attached to it. If it's just about "repairing the timeline," I'd rather not. Because that to me is nothing new. I'd rather skip it altogether, and try again when there's a real story involved.

If too many episodes are wasted/burned by not having a compelling story, then you're just using it up to no real purpose. That's when it becomes time to lay down the law and say "NO more time travel." Then writer A protests that he had a good idea for a TT story, but the answer is "sorry, the people before you blew it by doing it to death, and often poorly. Blame them." Writer B goes ahead and submits his TT story anyway, knowing that breaking the standing rule will either get him fired or promoted, depending on how good he was. It pays off big, the fans love it, and he gets promoted. Writer C meanwhile complains that it never even occurred to him to break the standing rule, but obviously he wasn't the right person to do it in that case (again, keeping in mind that it's already been done to death). Call it creative Darwinism if you like. I think it's fair.

I take nothing away from my STIVs, or other favorite TT episodes. They're already burned on celluloid anyway, so they're safe (along with a lot of forgettable ones). It's like Kevin saying they shouldn't have resurrected Spock even though TSFS is his 'other' favorite ST film. I do believe if something has been abused, then more conservative restrictions are called for.

[horatio]

I'd have to go over all TT episodes but my guess (I'd have to really do it because, as you described it before, I suffer from selective amnesia and in general only remember good Trek stories) is that only a tiny minority of them belongs into this soulless, techywacky category you described. It's not something that has been messed up for all eternity just because a few TT stories have been bad.
Do soulless stories not suck independent of whether they feature time travel, the holodeck or photon torpedoes?

[NCC-73515]

Originally Posted by Saquist

I'll concur.
lets see how he lost that eye...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEA-TEHeLaA

[kevin]

Originally Posted by horatio

I'd have to go over all TT episodes but my guess (I'd have to really do it because, as you described it before, I suffer from selective amnesia and in general only remember good Trek stories) is that only a tiny minority of them belongs into this soulless, techywacky category you described. It's not something that has been messed up for all eternity just because a few TT stories have been bad.

I think the effect is magnified by the fact that the 'bad' ones get disproportionately prevalent towards the end period of the last phase of Trek and it's increasing use in VOY and ENT (I pretty much can rule most of VOY's use of TT as being gimmicky, and then there's the whole TCW malarky obviously) when it's (I think) fair to say that by then the quality control wheels had flown off the track in regards to what they were doing with TT based stories.

Do soulless stories not suck independent of whether they feature time travel, the holodeck or photon torpedoes?

I know I wasn't strictly asked, but it depends..............Sub Rosa isn't up to much but I'd watch it over others.

[Captain Tom Coughlin]

This is kind of why I was OK with the idea of a reboot in the first place. I felt like Trek had been sort of used up, not just in the time travel aspect but pretty much everything. It was time for something bold.

[horatio]

Originally Posted by kevin

I think the effect is magnified by the fact that the 'bad' ones get disproportionately prevalent towards the end period of the last phase of Trek and it's increasing use in VOY and ENT (I pretty much can rule most of VOY's use of TT as being gimmicky, and then there's the whole TCW malarky obviously) when it's (I think) fair to say that by then the quality control wheels had flown off the track in regards to what they were doing with TT based stories.

I am not too fond of Braxton but what the hell is bad about Time and Again, Year of Hell, Timeless, the one where Kes came back or the one were the ship was split up in different time frames and Seska came back? And before any 'dead is dead' stuff starts, this story merely repeated the point of 'Worst Case Scenario', that Seska is undead.
About the TCW, sure, the concept doesn't fit into a prequel series. But except for the sphere builders in the third season there were only a handful of episodes, Cold Front and Future Tense plus the longer stories between seasons. None of them except for Zero Hour is bad while Future Tense, Twilight and Similitude are among the most memorable ENT episodes.

I know that going over episodes is boring but nothing like sticking to good old Anglo-Saxon empirics. When in Rome ...
The claim that everything concerning time travel went down hill in VOY and ENT is one of these Trek myths based on overperception. Kirks screws a few women and beats up a few bad guys and becomes a womanizing cowboy, VOY exaggerates the technobabble and becomes the time travel up-fu*ker (there most be a noun of fu*k up), ENT has a series-inappropriate TT concept and each and every story under this concept has to suck.

Originally Posted by Captain Tom Coughlin

This is kind of why I was OK with the idea of a reboot in the first place. I felt like Trek had been sort of used up, not just in the time travel aspect but pretty much everything. It was time for something bold.

Boldy going where ... we have already been.
Totally agree about the used up part though. 24th century was finished after VOY, 22nd century was finished after ENT so inevitably the next part of the journey takes place in the 23rd century.
I am all for lingering there for a while and, talking about boldness, doing something a little bit risky like exploring this century sans Kirk&Co.