Star Trek - Voyager

[Malcy]

I believe the decision to violently kill Icheb was directly in relation to the actor being offensively opinionated on social media. There's been a few questions about how this could have been handled but the general consensus is that the violence in his death scene was extremely pointed and intentional.

He also had a go at Shatner which riled a few people up. Even still. His death added nothing to the story except being a poorly written excuse for 7 to become a totally different character.

New scenes set 20 years later sounds amazing - but then I remembered that thanks to Star Trek: Picard, Icheb canonically died by having his eyeballs torn out by an organ harvesting ring, and Seven is canonically a mercenary who goes around vapourising people.

At least things might be looking up for Harry!

Thing is, they must have had to scan him first to make sure he had the cortical node or that it was working properly but common logic like that is beyond the Picard writers.

Harry is a Captain in Star Trek Online. Still has a bit of an Ensign naivety at times though.

[Malcy]

https://comicbook.com/startrek/news/star-trek-first-contact-day/

April 4th of course. A few panels but there will be one for Prodigy featuring Mulgrew.

[Mr Trumpet]

New scenes set 20 years later sounds amazing - but then I remembered that thanks to Star Trek: Picard, Icheb canonically died by having his eyeballs torn out by an organ harvesting ring, and Seven is canonically a mercenary who goes around vapourising people.

At least things might be looking up for Harry!

Come now, Seven vapourised one person. That's a lower murder count than Worf.

And Icheb was, I think, the most boring recurring character in the history of Star Trek. Redundant, too - did Voyager really need a third highly intelligent but emotionally stunted character? Dying in a gruesome fashion was the only interesting thing he ever did. The original actor seems like a bellend as well.

[earl_sleek]

Just learned the actors that played Chakotay and B'lanna are apparently massive rightwing chodes. Kinda makes sense Robert Beltran would be but it's a shame about Roxanne Dawson :(

[earl_sleek]

I always hated Icheb so his death is one of my favourite parts of Picard.

[Mr Trumpet]

Just learned the actors that played Chakotay and B'lanna are apparently massive rightwing chodes. Kinda makes sense Robert Beltran would be but it's a shame about Roxanne Dawson :(

Maquis confirmed for 2nd Amendment nutters

[Wonderful Butternut]

He also had a go at Shatner which riled a few people up. Even still. His death added nothing to the story except being a poorly written excuse for 7 to become a totally different character.

Yeah, cos the passage of 20 in universe years obviously wasn't enough of an excuse to have Seven be different. I wouldn't mind, but they could've nearly made it mean something by having Seven KO or incapacitate Incest Romulan (Narissa, I think her name was) in the last episode instead of killing her. Because she realised disintegrating BeJaysus didn't undo Icheb's loss, so killing Narissa wouldn't square up the death of Hugh.

But no, kick her into a chasm instead and piss and moan about it to Captain Edgelord later.

[Lemming]

Come now, Seven vapourised one person. That's a lower murder count than Worf.

And Icheb was, I think, the most boring recurring character in the history of Star Trek. Redundant, too - did Voyager really need a third highly intelligent but emotionally stunted character? Dying in a gruesome fashion was the only interesting thing he ever did. The original actor seems like a bellend as well.

Ah, fair enough then, vapourised one person and kicked another down a big chasm. Either way it's just an utterly disappointing way for the character to end up, IMO.

I like Icheb! That episode where he erroneously thinks B'Elana is into him and tries to gently let her down sticks in my mind as one of my favourite moments in Voyager, immature as it was.

[Mobbd]

New scenes set 20 years later sounds amazing - but then I remembered that thanks to Star Trek: Picard, Icheb canonically died by having his eyeballs torn out by an organ harvesting ring, and Seven is canonically a mercenary who goes around vapourising people.

At least things might be looking up for Harry!

I hate all that stuff too. But the Voyager doc isn't made by the cretins at CBS, I don't think. It's an independent production and if their DS9 doc is anything to go by, they're fond fans who know their stuff. Can't imagine they'll go down this route - or want to rock the boat at all really.

I had no special fondness for Icheb, but the way he was treated on Picard was a fucking disgrace. Amateurish incel fanfic shit.

[JamesTC]

Come now, Seven vapourised one person. That's a lower murder count than Worf.

I try to forget the show, but I'm pretty sure that Seven beams back at the end of the eye patch episode in order to murder a load more people.

[Mobbd]

Guys. It's cool. None of it happened. They're calling it canon. But it obviously isn't. It's "badge-slapping" or whatever they called the commercial practice that brought us the Spock helmet.

Not that I'm knocking the Spock helmet exactly.

[Malcy]

Guys. It's cool. None of it happened. They're calling it canon. But it obviously isn't. It's "badge-slapping" or whatever they called the commercial practice that brought us the Spock helmet.

Not that I'm knocking the Spock helmet exactly.

Yeah I'm not really including any events of Picard in my own head-canon. The Voyager books set after the end of the series and parts of Star Trek Online make up mine.

[Mr Trumpet]

I try to forget the show, but I'm pretty sure that Seven beams back at the end of the eye patch episode in order to murder a load more people.

Nah i've been over the footage with a team of experts and they use the same visual shorthand as the Abrams films wrt phasers: red blast for kill, blue for stun. She only kills that one person in the scene, everyone else is hit with the non-lethals.

Guys. It's cool. None of it happened. They're calling it canon. But it obviously isn't.

Always been baffled with the performative weirdness of pretending a thing you didn't like doesn't exist. The Matrix sequels etc

[oy vey]

Just learned the actors that played Chakotay and B'lanna are apparently massive rightwing chodes. Kinda makes sense Robert Beltran would be but it's a shame about Roxanne Dawson :(

Dwight Schultz is pretty insanely to the right as well.

[Mobbd]

Nah i've been over the footage with a team of experts and they use the same visual shorthand as the Abrams films wrt phasers: red blast for kill, blue for stun. She only kills that one person in the scene, everyone else is hit with the non-lethals.

Always been baffled with the performative weirdness of pretending a thing you didn't like doesn't exist. The Matrix sequels etc

No need to be baffled when you can ask. ;)

It's not just that it's unlikable, it's also incompatible. It's like if they brought out a new-look Lego brick that doesn't click into the system but still has "Lego" written on the box and a complaints department aggressively insisting that it works.

If they'd said it was a reboot or another thing entirely, it would have been more palatable. But they didn't do that because they want to feast on the brand.

Some Star Trek fans don't like Enterprise or Voyager or even DS9, but they don't usually deny that they are canon. It's a different problem.

[JamesTC]

Nah i've been over the footage with a team of experts and they use the same visual shorthand as the Abrams films wrt phasers: red blast for kill, blue for stun. She only kills that one person in the scene, everyone else is hit with the non-lethals.

Memory Alpha indicates that she simply turned the gun into "automatic". Was this non-lethal thing said by the writers? If not then I think it was clear at the time I watched it that she is simply murdering a load of people.

[Deanjam]

Whether set to stun or kill, the sight of her wandering around with two guns blasting away like the most boring form of action hero was a depressing sight.

I liked aspects of her character. She is more human now, less stiff. It's how she should have been at the end of Voyager. And Jeri Ryan plays the part really well. But everyone on Picard has to be a miserable asshole, because DRAMA!

[Deanjam]

Always been baffled with the performative weirdness of pretending a thing you didn't like doesn't exist. The Matrix sequels etc

I'd say that's a perfectly normal thing to do. There's no such thing as canon. You take the things you like and ignore the rest.

[oy vey]

The whole ignore the canon thing is tricky because you have ripple effects in future stories. I didn't like Data being killed off in ST Nemises but they had to roll with that plot point in Picard. Turns out Picard is a bag of shite so the shit ripples continue. All it takes is some decent writing to work around stuff, or better still come up with fresh stuff that delivers.

It's when writers decide to ignore canon that annoys me. The Halloween franchise is a sack of piss for that.

[dr_christian_troy]

I'd have been more interested if the premise behind Picard was under the umbrella of something like Star Trek: Legacy where each season focused on a different TNG (or DS9, Voyager etc) character and where they were now, with occasional crossovers with various characters but essentially 10 episodes focusing on a specific character we all love on an adventure which isn't entitled to have much of an impact on the rest of the universe (or for the writers to actually think ahead and perhaps thread a bigger narrative across numerous seasons, with a final season reuniting the characters we had previously focused on, for example).

[JamesTC]

You can't really reconcile much of Star Trek anyway. Trill and the Augment Wars are two things that come to mind as being completely different across two different Trek shows (DS9 being the show which changes them both).

I don't see why people get so bogged down with "canon". People still debate TAS for some reason. Why do you need the validation one way or another?

Just watch what you like and ignore the stuff you don't.

[Mobbd]

I didn't like Data being killed off in ST Nemises but they had to roll with that plot point in Picard.

In a way they had to, yes. But in another, they could have just ignored it like they ignored practically everything else. I think they only watched Nemesis. They certainly didn't watch Measure of a Man. Well, maybe one of their interns did but their crib notes weren't fully digested by the production team.

You can't really reconcile much of Star Trek anyway. Trill and the Augment Wars are two things that come to mind as being completely different across two different Trek shows (DS9 being the show which changes them both).

I don't see why people get so bogged down with "canon". People still debate TAS for some reason. Why do you need the validation one way or another?

Things like the Trills (and Vorta having psychic powers and the pronunciation of "Bajor") I see as pilot-like changes of course and completely forgivable. I mean, they could have been avoided with a little more careful planning but in the interest of having a good time, I think things like that are forgivable. Nitpicking is fun but nobody really holds Trek to such high standards. The problems with CBS are altogether different imo.

I just watched TAS, actually, and was on the look out for clues as to the canonicity question! The main problem is the appearance of a Holodeck on the Enterprise (actually called a Rec Room but the same exact thing) in an episode called The Practical Joker. That's the only thing that's hard to get around really. There are plenty of things in TAS not seen before or since, but that's fine too. (TAS is generally seen as canon now, I believe, despite the Holodeck balls-up; and the error was on the part of Encounter at Farpoint rather than TAS itself).

I'd have been more interested if the premise behind Picard was under the umbrella of something like Star Trek: Legacy where each season focused on a different TNG (or DS9, Voyager etc) character and where they were now, with occasional crossovers with various characters but essentially 10 episodes focusing on a specific character we all love on an adventure which isn't entitled to have much of an impact on the rest of the universe (or for the writers to actually think ahead and perhaps thread a bigger narrative across numerous seasons, with a final season reuniting the characters we had previously focused on, for example).

Yeah, that would have been neat. But so many things would have been neat. We were watching some TNG the other night - a season 2 episode in which Picard brings up his passion for archaeology for the first time and how he chose Starfleet instead, but one day...!

[JamesTC]

Things like the Trills (and Vorta having psychic powers and the pronunciation of "Bajor") I see as pilot-like changes of course and completely forgivable. I mean, they could have been avoided with a little more careful planning but in the interest of having a good time, I think things like that are forgivable. Nitpicking is fun but nobody really holds Trek to such high standards. The problems with CBS are altogether different imo.

I just watched TAS, actually, and was on the look out for clues as to the canonicity question! The main problem is the appearance of a Holodeck on the Enterprise (actually called a Rec Room but the same exact thing) in an episode called The Practical Joker. That's the only thing that's hard to get around really. There are plenty of things in TAS not seen before or since, but that's fine too. (TAS is generally seen as canon now, I believe, despite the Holodeck balls-up; and the error was on the part of Encounter at Farpoint rather than TAS itself).

The first few seasons of TNG indicate that the holodeck is new but both TAS and a few Voyager episodes indicate that holodecks have been around for a fair bit longer. Off the top of my head it was one of the Naomi Wildman episodes which had a character mention a holodeck programme they used as a child.

[Blumf]

I suspect the holodeck has been under heavy development from the TOS/TAS era, where it was just a few steps up from those immersive sets they used on The Mandalorian, through TNG's yellow grid room, where it was totally interactive and fine grained (which is what surprises people there), onto VOY's holo-emitter tech that can be dotted about anywhere needed.

Saw some reviewer suggest they could have made the entire bridge of the ship in PIC holographic. So Picard could have sat down, muttered something about not being used to this modern setup, and reconfigured it with a TNG era LCARS layout and look. So much wasted potential from that show.

[Wonderful Butternut]

You can't really reconcile much of Star Trek anyway. Trill and the Augment Wars are two things that come to mind as being completely different across two different Trek shows (DS9 being the show which changes them both).

I don't see why people get so bogged down with "canon". People still debate TAS for some reason. Why do you need the validation one way or another?

Just watch what you like and ignore the stuff you don't.

I'm not majorly hung up on canon. Really for me it's down to just how insulting the stuff they feed the audience is. I'd let things like the Trill being different in TNG pass. TNG Trill was only a once off. And the Augments Wars being quietly advanced 100 years is fine with me too. We went from horse drawn carriages and planes being rickety pieces of wood and canvas that you steered by bending the wings and often crashed, to lots of people owning cars and safe intercontinental air travel in about 60 years leading up to the 60s. It's not unreasonable they thought spaceflight would go the same way and people being blasted off on sleeper ships by the 1990s is a thing that'd happen.

What does bother me is telling me that this, featured in literally 100s of episodes:



Is the same thing as this:



That requires the showrunners to either not give a shit about the universe they're working in, which begs the question as to why they bother working in it at all, or to think the viewers are morons. Ditto the fact that no one in the subsequent 900 years of in universe time knows anything about the mycelial network or the Spore Drive, or seemingly has even done any further research into it, is because everyone swore not to speak of the Real Seymour Skinner again.

Retconning the first encounter with the Borg, both in VOY and ENT is also a bit much, albeit not as severe as Disco's Klingnots.

That being said, I could let even that side if the show was good on it's own merits. But new Trek generally hasn't been.

[greenman]

I suspect the holodeck has been under heavy development from the TOS/TAS era, where it was just a few steps up from those immersive sets they used on The Mandalorian, through TNG's yellow grid room, where it was totally interactive and fine grained (which is what surprises people there), onto VOY's holo-emitter tech that can be dotted about anywhere needed.

Saw some reviewer suggest they could have made the entire bridge of the ship in PIC holographic. So Picard could have sat down, muttered something about not being used to this modern setup, and reconfigured it with a TNG era LCARS layout and look. So much wasted potential from that show.

That was actually somewhat hinted it in The Visitor episode of DS9, I seem to remember Bashir or O'Brien comment about having to use non holographic controls on the old defiant.

[JamesTC]

Retconning the first encounter with the Borg, both in VOY and ENT is also a bit much, albeit not as severe as Disco's Klingnots.

That being said, I could let even that side if the show was good on it's own merits. But new Trek generally hasn't been.

Though Enterprise you can let it slide since it is a sequel to First Contact so it wasn't really a retcon (the Ferengi are a different story!)

Definitely agree on the second point (well actually I pretty much agree with your whole point too as I also loathe new Trek). And on both counts specifically talking about the Borg, they led to good stories so I don't think too many care too much.

Haven't they changed the Klingon design twice in Discovery? The second time to make it more like the proper Klingons? It was such a weird choice to change the design of an alien that around five episodes earlier was given a great explanation for why they had two different designs in universe.

EDIT: The Spore Drive you can say that it wasn't used again because it was exploiting an alien race to work (I stopped watching a few episodes into Season 1 so I don't know if that was ever changed so that it wasn't horrific alien abuse). What really annoyed me about that is that Equinox had already done that story except now we were expected to believe that the good guys were the ones exploiting the aliens to go fast.

[oy vey]

Though Enterprise you can let it slide since it is a sequel to First Contact so it wasn't really a retcon (the Ferengi are a different story!)

When the Borg make contact near the end of Regenerated, the convenient skipping of "we are the Borg" was borderline piss taking but otherwise I liked that episode. Atmospheric. I also enjoyed First Contact for it's occasional flaws. Good writing forgives a lot.

[Wonderful Butternut]

Though Enterprise you can let it slide since it is a sequel to First Contact so it wasn't really a retcon (the Ferengi are a different story!)

The only problem I have with that is that we have to believe Picard, concerned with preserving the timeline and stroking a huge murder boner about the Borg for that entire movie, never thought to make sure the debris didn't fall to earth. Don't buy it.

What happened is a large part of the writing staff had obviously watched the Borg eps of Voyager in an all night Coco Pops binge and wanted to make another one, and no one said "hey lads, hang on a second."

The Ferengi one was extra stupid. Archer saying "stay away from Starfleet" kept them away for 200 years. Yeah, sure. That's a thing that'd happen. Then of course, whatever about no formal first contact, how compatible is the Federation's apparent lack of knowledge about Ferengi in early TNG (they eat people!!!) with the fact that Ferengi have clearly been trading around the galaxy for decades if not more from DS9?

Haven't they changed the Klingon design twice in Discovery? The second time to make it more like the proper Klingons? It was such a weird choice to change the design of an alien that around five episodes earlier was given a great explanation for why they had two different designs in universe.

They had them regrow their hair and toned down the prosthetics a little so at least the actors can speak properly and you don't have "Ad. mir. al. I. am... T'kuv...ma" anymore. They still have elongated heads (albeit less noticable), scales/ridges on their necks, possibly still have the clawed hands, and generally are not plausible as being the same species as TNG/DS9/VOY Klingons.

They only way you could spin it is that they went playing around with their DNA to try and cure the lasting cosmetic effects of the Augment Virus. But even then, we have to accept that within 15 years they had given up on doing that and somehow went back to looking like they did immediately after the Augment Virus. Which is non-sensical.

EDIT: The Spore Drive you can say that it wasn't used again because it was exploiting an alien race to work (I stopped watching a few episodes into Season 1 so I don't know if that was ever changed so that it wasn't horrific alien abuse). What really annoyed me about that is that Equinox had already done that story except now we were expected to believe that the good guys were the ones exploiting the aliens to go fast.

It was likely the very next episode after you stopped, cos it was very early on. Burnham wanted them to stop using the Tardigrade to pilot the drive because of the said horrific alien abuse. But they couldn't because Lorca had been captured by Klingons and they had to use the drive to retrieve him before the Klingons tortured all the Spore Drive's secrets out of him (God, that would've been awful). But then the Tardigrade went into hibernation from the stress of repeated jumps and rather than trying to force it out of its hibernation, Stamets injected himself with Tardigrade DNA to be able to pilot the Spore drive personally. Then they released the Tardigrade back into space with a few canisters of spores and it was fine.

They did discover in season 2 that the mycelial realm was inhabited by aliens, and Stamets was talking about not using the drive anymore because they thought they were damaging their realm. I suspect at some point in the creative process, before they decided they were going to jet off into the 32nd century and not speak of the Real Seymour Skinner[nb]Yes, I'll keep repeating this cos it was so stupid.[/nb] again, it might've been something that would've recurred through the series, and become the reason why the Spore Drive is not used in the 24th century.

But actually it transpired that what was damaging the realm was the spore version of Culber that had somehow been created when the real one died. And once he was bullshitted back into normal existence, everything was fine.

[Mr Trumpet]

I'm not majorly hung up on canon. Really for me it's down to just how insulting the stuff they feed the audience is. I'd let things like the Trill being different in TNG pass. TNG Trill was only a once off. And the Augments Wars being quietly advanced 100 years is fine with me too. We went from horse drawn carriages and planes being rickety pieces of wood and canvas that you steered by bending the wings and often crashed, to lots of people owning cars and safe intercontinental air travel in about 60 years leading up to the 60s. It's not unreasonable they thought spaceflight would go the same way and people being blasted off on sleeper ships by the 1990s is a thing that'd happen.

What does bother me is telling me that this, featured in literally 100s of episodes:



Is the same thing as this:



That requires the showrunners to either not give a shit about the universe they're working in, which begs the question as to why they bother working in it at all, or to think the viewers are morons. Ditto the fact that no one in the subsequent 900 years of in universe time knows anything about the mycelial network or the Spore Drive, or seemingly has even done any further research into it, is because everyone swore not to speak of the Real Seymour Skinner again.

Retconning the first encounter with the Borg, both in VOY and ENT is also a bit much, albeit not as severe as Disco's Klingnots.

That being said, I could let even that side if the show was good on it's own merits. But new Trek generally hasn't been.

It seems crackers to me to invest so much importance in design continuity in a franchise that spans decades (and frequently changes things up in subtle and... less subtle ways anyway). But to each their own. I can understand being less forgiving of such things if you also don't enjoy the writing for other reasons.

And the Spore drive - to recreate it you need a) access to a space Tardigrade, an extraordinarily rare creature that can apparently teleport about, b) the particular fungus that exists both in our universe and in subspace, which they make a point of telling us how rare it is, and c) someone with the knowledge of both mycology and subspace physics to figure out how it all fits together. I can buy it as a vanishingly unlikely confluence of circumstances.

On topic: I just noticed a mistake in the rather good Voyager episode Coda, where Janeway apparently dies and has a vision of her father, an Admiral. He supposedly died years earlier, prior to S1 of TNG, and indeed he seems to be wearing an older-style Admiral's uniform. But he's wearing the Voyager-era comm badge and not the TNG one! I hope someone was fired for that blunder.