Sunday 2 October 2016

Let's talk about Star Trek.

Well, world news will not continue today. Since the next big thing is what's going to happen with Deutsche bank next, and the German stock market has a bank holiday today.

Eye on prepping though!

So I thought I'd talk a little about Star Trek series, including prominently Deep Space Nine, and secondarily The Next Generation and Voyager. (Major spoilers. I've seen to the end of these series and will be discussing what happened at the end of them).

At the moment blogging is my only love!

The point is is to tease out what is realistic and unrealistic in these series, trying to arrive at some sort of idea of the future. Is there anything that can be salvaged in this? Unfortunately no. But fiction has parallels in life.

So, first off Deep Space Nine. I believe there is a kind of organic mix between character, writers, the energy fields of actors etc. That sets things in a certain way. Deep Space Nines star character in my understanding was Jedzia Dax. The reason being, that while the other characters to some extent followed The Next Generations ideas of 'evolved sensibilities'. Jedzia was one of the characters whos eyes would tick over, and who would lie and scheme when she was cornered.

Every episode she was in, when I watched it, grounded the episode in some sort of reality.

I enjoyed the seasons up until the end of season 6. My mind sort of goes through an algebraic problem solving routine and I got down to why I think things seemed to change after this point.

Deep Space Nine went down an interesting route. After the fourth season, an enemy was entered into the equation that was very challenging and militant. The Dominion. Including the founders and the Jem Hadar.

So, there was a lot of tension. A lot of discussion about real things about war like looking at casualty lists. But the program, as it progressed, shied away from keeping the villains realistic.

Gal Dukats character started off as a bad guy. A bit of an arrogant brute who would turn round and do very good things. As the show progressed, his love for his daughter and love of his people was profound. He suffered her sudden death, then his character went off and became a villain par excellent. Worse in a lot of ways, or at least more dangerous, then the borg. Channeling negative spirits directly and having telekinetic control over reality.

Yes, that is the real plot. Up until the point where things like this started happening it was a good program that had a rawness to it. It seems to me that the Deep Space Nine producers decided they had to keep Gal Dukats character bad because he is such a charming bad guy. But bad guys are not charming. George Soros has a lizard like persona and makes your skin crawl. You do not want to continue watching him, as does Henry Kissinger.

This lead to a silly character, Jedzia's replacement Ezri Dax to come into the show. And it became in its dying season a liberal wet dream. Characters became stupid and ineffective to advance the plot (as in the baseball episode, technological advancement and military discipline is not enough to allow them to pick up baseball quickly?) and would have psychological sessions about the pains of war. Showing no loyalty to the characters situation of having to be hardened to these realities. Surely!

One of the real piss takers though. As much as Gal Dukats ridiculous enlightenment of evil, is that there was so much effort taken to overthrow the Deep Space Nine space station, in order to protect the wormhole from interference. This was no needed because it was stated clearly in more than one episode that the Dominion had incredibly long range transporters. All they would have had to do to stop the wormhole being mined is to get close enough (easily done) and transport a bomb onto the station.

Another little irk is that why do people go to Quarks to buy food, which you clearly see Quark pushing buttons on the replicator to create, when they have those same replicators in their quarters that feed them for free!? Is it not a bit unrealistic that Quark would get free energy from the Federation without charge? Surely that business model would make someone obscenely rich very quickly! Which Quark does not manage.

The boringness of bad guys. The dull, cruel, indirect and cowardly mindset, would have allowed the positive characters to act within their stated capability. Rather than below it.

All three:

Out of all the star treks the one that seems to have the most connection to reality is Star Trek Voyager. The Next Generation is really very silly. The situations they find themselves in and things such as the humanity of an Artificial intelligence character are so contrived. People cannot realistically live under the weird 'evolved sensibility' they had. It's a clown show. (First Contact is still a fantastic movie though. Patrick Stewart is a fantastic actor.)

Voyager though was annoying. And that is good because people are. The characters were raw, flawed, and human. The captain was a bitch a fair few times. A good combination of character and actor. Maternal, strong, and also feminine, over stressed seeming neurotic sometimes. Not perfect.

The fights with the borg were unrealistic because you don't win against the borg. Or at least not as the borg are thus far explained. They have assimilated billions of cultures and technology you don't win in a firefight with them. But the psychic characters were realistic (Kes), The 'little people' were human not super human. The threats were really quite disturbing occasionally. There was no mention of 'evolved sensibilities'. As though the writers had considered that that is bullshit!

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