Space, the final frontier

A Taste of Armageddon, where two worlds have brought warfare down to a computerized exercise and people have to mindlessly walk into the death chambers to fill the numbers. Captain Kirk?s statement, ??I choose not to fight today? has always stuck with me, But actually all the episodes were my favorite.

I have all but two of the episodes on VHS. Talk about a show ahead of it?s time. I?ve always said that Star Trek is a history book from the future given to us. There were a lot of things that they had in the show that now really exists. The oximeter that we use in surgery, a few other things in surger, the log books that FedEx uses when delivering packages, etc. Not to mention the social implications it had.

Here is a link to a good site for plot summaries: http://www.ericweisstein.com/fun/startrek/

I found the over-stressed (dare I say it, "American") moral messages of Star Trek Original and the first season of TNG made it almost unwatchable for me. Maybe I was spoilt by Doctor Who, I don't really know. The Daleks would have kicked four colours of snot out of that prat Kirk.

As an avid "hard"science fiction reader all of my life, I found the "science" a bit off-putting, too. Got a plot hole? Mind-meld. Or maybe get some Tachyons. Or, more often, Kirk either snogs or beats the crap out of an alien.

Once TNG got going, though, I enjoyed it a lot more along with, in their turn, DS9 and Voyager. I think it was at its best in the middle to later series of TNG.

As we do not use money in the Star Trek universe, have my thoughts for free.

Neil :D

I like the old series. I like laughing about the go go boots, miniskirts and beehives as well.

It was way before its time. I don't know about the "overstressed morality" It seem to me that the running theme of all the STs was tolerance of others.

One of the things I always wanted to see was the new series use the old fight music that was used in every one of the original epsiodes.

Was the one where they had the race war with the guys who were black on the right and white on the left aganst the ones who were white of the right and black on the left. A bit heavy handed, but it was one of the few episodes that actually was worth the film it took up. After the original though they should throw the rest of it away except for the bits with Seven of Nine in 'em.
Just off to adjust my Heisenberg compensator, science my arse.

For some unkown reason (Maybe "Q" had something to do with it) I completely missed the initial series but was enraptured by TNG.

My favourite character is Mr Data and my favourite episode(s) was when he was trying to learn how to make a joke.

It was also a bit of a giggle when all the crew were infected with some aphrodisiac and Mr Data was able to demonstrate to one of the female crew that he had been programmed to, well, completely satisfy a woman.

To Trekkies and TNG fans alike -- eat your hearts out. At a garage sale (you do have those in America I trust?) I picked up for $AU 60 the entire set of TNG on VHS with the tapes still sealed in their plastic covers.

[I also picked up a small number of the original series at a video rental shop clear-out]

Remember Star Trek III when the go back in time to the 80's to capture a whale and bring it to the future? Well Scotty needs to get some see through aluminum and tries to talk to the computer and then says "How quaint" and then types like a million words a minute. If they don't have key boards in the future how would he know how to type so fast?

The FINAL one!

The Trouble with Tribbles. Hands down.

Lee

they were introduced in the episode where the Enterprise visits the planet(Rigel something) where Captain Kirk's brother,Sam, lived. In this episode Spock is attacked and poisoned? by giant flying fried eggs (I kid you not). Bones tries to cure Spock with broad spectrum, high intensity light. Spock protects his eyes from permanent blindness from the treatment using his Vulcan inner eyelid. Now, wasn't that important? Don't you feel informed? Am I not ripe for flaming now?

You are absolutely correct. That is exactly when and why the double eyelids came into play. Why should you be flamed for being correct?

ProtiusX, I am disappointed you didn't know this since you started the discussion. Whay kind of Trekker are you anyway???

Also Jadzia and Worf end up together. In the biblical sence during the DS9 epsiodes.

I really didn't watch a DS9 until recently when my father got the whole series on DVD. I am really liking it now. Even my wife is starting to like it.

Lord help me, I am a Trekkie.

I loved the one where Kirk and the gang went to the society that built their culture around a book detailing Chicago in the Roaring 20's.

Kirk saying "I'm callin' you a penny-ante operator" could have only been pulled off by someone with the consummate acting skills of Mr. Wm. Shatner.

After Khan came back on the big screen, I always thought that this episode would be a prime candidate for a movie follow-up because at the end, Kirk discovered he left his communicator on the planet.

I kind of felt that this episode was a bit of a smack at the Japanese industrial complex of the 60's as they built an economic powerhouse. Many Americans at the time thought that the Japanese had a habit of taking American concepts and building upon them and perfecting the mfg techniques, without much true innovation of their own.

First one you're looking for is called "Tarnsman of Gor" - if you don't read that one first, you stand no chance of following the rest of the Chronicles!

Admit it - it was the raunchy remark that got you going, wasn't it??!!

:D

GG

This was explained in an "Enterprise" episode where the Klingons were infected with a bio weapon and the cure was to give them a dna cure which contained human charecteristics, hence for a few generations the Klingons had much diminished foreheads.

Yeah I thought it was stretching it too.

As for Jadzia, yes very fine, but we Canadians got to see a special bit of Enterprise that Americans were shielded from (American censorship, the horror, the horror)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Enterprise#T.27Pol.27s_Love_Scene

I really liked DS9 - the holodeck stuff they did was fun.

James

I have disgraced myself in the eyes of my fellow trekkies. I am ashamed. It goes to show you though that we learn something new every day.

Is there a difference between trekkers and trekkies?

Apparently in the truly Trek-geek crowd, trekkie is not too flattering. What's up with this?

Has to be my all-time favorite. The look on Spock's face is priceless.

Juvenile drivel I assure you, you'd be better of with Buffy books.

Stuff I've picked up recently.

Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel series. Sheer brilliance.

Jennifer Fallon's Second Son's Trilogy. Cleverly done, don't know if I'll read it again though.

Kim Harrisson's Trilogy starting with Dead Witch Walking, tongue in cheek but a damn good read.

Kelly Armstrong, surprisingly good, considering she starts off with werewolves (Bitten) and ends up with ghosts (Haunted).

Caroline (CJ) Cherryh's just added to her
Foreigner series as well, that's real science fiction without being hard science fiction.
Probably the best stuff she ever written and in my opinion the best creator of aliens ever.

Peter F Hamilton has just added to Pandora's Star with Judas Unchained and finally after far too long George RR Martin has done the next book 'Feast for Crows' in his series A Song of Ice and Fire, which I will be buying tomorrow as I will have gone four days without popping into Waterstones.

Just think, at the edge of the galaxy, I could become powerful enough to actually get an OS that worked!

My favorite is "Doomsday Machine," the episode where we find Commodore Decker alone aboard the ruined USS Constellation, fighting a giant mettalic space-cone that eats planets.
http://www.ericweisstein.com/fun/startrek/TheDoomsdayMachine.html

The same weapon made a reappearance in the Peter David novel Vendetta (where it fights The Borg). Always had a soft spot for that episode, both because it was the first time I saw another Constitution-class vessel (a surprisingly mortal one, compared to the invincible Enterprise) and the first time I saw a shuttlecraft in-flight. Very cool. Plus, it was a very human drama--Decker and his survivor's guilt--with no obvious-metaphor-aliens to muck things up.

Runner-up: "Balance of Terror," which introduced both the Romulans and their cloaking devices, and had Mark Lenard (who would later play Spock's dad, Sarek) as a Romulan counterpart to Kirk.
http://www.ericweisstein.com/fun/startrek/BalanceOfTerror.html

Again, great character drama, without so many obvious plot devices to muddy the waters.

The episodes you're talking about are:

"Skin of Evil" (where Tasha dies).
http://www.tv.com/star-trek-the-next-generation/skin-of-evil/episode/19010/summary.html

"Redemption, Part I" (where Tasha's half-Romulan daughter, Commander Sela, first appears).
http://www.tv.com/star-trek-the-next-generation/redemption-1/episode/19086/summary.html

Sela is the result of time-loop from the episode "Yesterday's Enterprise" (a personal favorite of mine).
http://www.tv.com/star-trek-the-next-generation/yesterdays-enterprise/episode/19049/summary.html

Very inside-joke episode. Lotsa fun.

Have to count the Original Pilot as a separate show, since it didn't get the TOS going, that took a whole new Pilot episode.

But it's pretty obvious that I watched TOS while growing up, since I actually knew the answer to my question. :)

It's understandable that this firestarter thing didn't really take off. You seem to be far too reasonable, friendly, and courteous to take the lead on that kind of project. I mean that as a compliment. :)

You people call yourselves "treckies"?! For shame!
Come on, everybody who is anybody knows that the best episode of the original series was "The City on the Edge of Forever" with a young Joan Collins as Kirk's love interest of the week. McCoy (in a drug induced stupor) accidentally goes through a 'Time Portal', thereby changing history. It's up to our two heroes; Kirk and Spock to put it to rights. Spock attempts to build a "Nemonic Memory Circuit" "..in this tin plated, vacuum tube culture?" in order to boost his tricorder recordings of the "precise moment" when McCoy changes history... Great stuff!
Incidentally, I believe the episode was originally written by Harlan Elison.
Video tape?! Kids stuff! I own a number of the original shows (as well as TNG) on Laser Disc. How geeky is that?!

Very hard to pick a once-and-for-all favorite, but I've always wondered if Trelane might have been our first glimpse (in "adolescent" form) of Next Generation's "Q".... ;>)

But the scene after the fight where Kirk is trying to determine the cause and is crestfallen!

Star Trek: The one where Kirk and the Lizard guy are on this planet and forced to fight to the death. Kirk refuses to kill him and this alien comments on how interesting it is.

Star Trek, Next Gen: The one where Barclay gets a virus that mutates and causes everyone on the Enterprise to de-evolve. I think Picard starts to become a Lemming.

Star Trek Enterprise: The one where the Ferengi take over the ship and put Porthos the beagle in a crate.

Star Trek Movie: Loved First Contact. It was by far the best one in my opinion.

I'll put in a vote for "I Mud." This episode is where the bridge crew gets trapped on a planet run by androids. Much wackiness and comedy insues as the crew and Mud use illogic to defeat the logic driven androids and free themselves.

I taped this episode back when I was in the army, so I wound up watching it several times years ago when I was stuck in the barracks.
It's the one where they are in a shuttlecraft taking the sick female commissioner to get treated, get attacked by an energy being and they find Zephram C, the inventor of warp drive.
Kirk and crew think the energy being is hostile, but then discover that it cares about the big Z.
Anyway - energy being loves Zephy, inhabits commissioners body healing her in the process.
The energy being offers eternal youth and health plus sweet lovin.
The commish decides that the situation is much better than her desk job back at the starbase, and decides to go along with the script.
[Fade to music]

I don't know why that one popped into my head. I seem to remember that the woman who played the commissioner did a good acting job. When she look with love it looked real. Ah-hem, at least to an eighteen year old boy. Ah, youth.

My favorite episode has to be "The trouble with tribbles" I still laugh when scotty tells kirk that he beamed all the tribbles to the klingon ship, "where they will be no tribble at all" LOL!!!

This one presents an interesting situation. They visit Omicron Ceti III expecting to see the colonists dead fron Berthold rays. Instead, all are not only healthy but perfectly so. Also the episode where Spock falls in love. Interesting not only because of the change in Spock but the question that it raises. Are the colonists better off the way they were, perfectly happy & healthy but showing absolutely no progress or would they be better off suffering normal problems in life but motivated to progress. The last line by Spock is interesting also - "For the 1st time in my life I was happy"

I always wondered how many planets it took to create one Dyson Sphere.

My all time favorites! What's really scary is after all this time I remember the names of most episodes.

read by her.
The early merchanter stuff, I really enjoy. The Chanur saga is excellent, but the Foreigner sequence is brilliant.
Just started A Feast For Crows but I understand there will be more. It is an awesome achievement up to press.
If he kills off Tyrion though I'm going to f' him up.

but interrupted by CJ Cherryh, Robert Jordan, Peter Hamilton and George RR Martin.
I shall get back to the young lady though, I've always time for another book.

complete knobheads like him. Didn't care for the slavery stuff. I think I read the first six back in my youth. Repeatative mindless drivel. Counterearth is an old idea, his aliens were just assholes in suits and his characters had the depth of a cardboard cutout.
If you want swords and tech
Ringo's March trilogy.
Walter Jon Williams' superb Ambassador's Progress
Pournelle's Jannisaries.
To name but a few

Kirk and the gang were on Organia, trying to get the natives to resist the Klingon occupiers. However, it turns out the Organians were actually energy beings and they forced and end to the war between the Federation and the Klingons.

I also liked the one where the Romulan ship attacked the outposts, using their cloaking device and the plasma weapon, and the Enterprise was (as usual) the only ship in the area that could stop them.

The Tribble one was good, and so was the one where they stole the cloaking device from the Romulans, and Spock and the Romulan hot babe commander got it on. Also, "Mirror Mirror" with the parallel universe. The "Star Trek-Enterprise" episodes in the parallel universe were also a great homage to the original series, with Capt. Archer wearing the Kirk-style uniform and T-Pol in the TOS miniskirt. :-)

They should have killed off Wesley Crusher, instead. He was quite annoying.

The best thing that Star Trek TOS did for tolerance was to have Lt. Uhura on the bridge. Hot black babe with nice legs emphasized by that mini-skirt she wore. She showed that there is nothing wrong for us white guys to have the hots for sexy black women. :-)

The Klingons were experimenting with genetic enhancements, from the "super men" like Khan Noonian Sing (genetically engineered by the grandfather of the creator of Data, who was played by Brent Spiner). However, the genetic experiments went wrong, and the Klingons ended up creating a plague. A side effect was that their ridges disappeared, since it was human DNA in the virus. The only cure was developed by a Klingon scientist who used Capt. Archer's DNA. The vaccine also caused the ridges to disappear, and all the Klingons needed to be vaccinated to protect them from the deadly plague. After a few generations, the need for the vaccine disappeared, and the Klingons reverted to normal (TNG style). I might have some of the facts wrong, so if anyone else is familiar with the episode, feel free to elaborate and/or correct.

Now you've done it. I have all but two of the original episodes of Star Trek O S on VHS and now I'm going have to go dig them out and watch all of them. Man, I thought I had gotten that out of my system. Thanks a lot, folks!!!! :)

Our first introduction to Khan Noonian Singh, played by Ricardo Montalban.

Insidious evil, intellect, and charisma all rolled into one mischevious bastard!