The Official Star Trek Thread

[angus]

I liked it when I was about 8, 9, 10, or 11, but I soon started to notice how cheesy everything was, like the flip number clocks.  (Will there really be 1967 technology in 2267?)  Then Star Trek:  The Motion Picture came out when I was around 12.  I saw it for free in the cinema behind our house in exchange for taking the garbage out for the old custodian that worked there.  He let me in the back door several times under that arrangement.  It wasn't particularly exciting, but I liked how they worked in Voyager 6, and Kirk hadn't become weird and fat yet, and anyway it was a Star Trek movie.  That in itself made it interesting for me.  When I was 16 Star Trek II:  The Wrath of Khan appeared on the scene.  I watched it at a small theater in a small town in northern Minnesota with my cousins, whom I stayed with summers during that period.  I really was fond of Lt. Saavik, Spock's protégé.  (She later played on Cheers and then got really fat and horrible-looking, but in 1982, especially with pointed ears, she was hot.)  I watched that movie several times and enjoyed it, and it made me seek out reruns of Star Trek.

About the time I started college Star Trek:  The Next Generation started playing and I was very excited about it.  Each episode was a little morality play.  Some folks tried to make connections between characters, like, so Data is Spock and Giordi is Scotty, but which one is Kirk?  I said, "it's not like that."  But eventually I started wondering about certain details as well, such as why everyone they met, in every part of the universe, could speak and understand English.  I had several conversations with friends about it and we came to the decision that they might have a universal translator, or that we just needed to suspend our disbelief, in order to perceive the story.  It's like the 1967 technology in the original series.  You just have to put that out of your mind to enjoy it.

I still watch it often enough, and once in a while I catch an episode that I've never seen before.  There's one channel that plays Star Trek episodes regularly, and some days they even have a 24-hour Star Trek marathon, always The Next Generation.  I usually watch those.  I also have "Star Trek" which was the 2009 movie with a new-and-improved sexy, Latino Spock and sexy Latino Uhuru.  That one I like as well, and it did much to develop the characters of Kirk and the rest.  The most recent one, Into Darkness, was a bit weird.  It felt more like a cross between a carnival ride and a brutal firefight.  I look forward to the new installation which should release this summer.

[angus]

humans, followed by klingons and vulcans.  Worf is one of my favorite characters.  Klingon raised Russian.  He's sort of like Obama, an islander of Kenyan descent raised by his white, midwestern grandparents. 

Worf for President 2020.

[angus]

7 of 9 is my favorite character

Do you take a little hand towel to the sofa with you every time she's on?  I can appreciate that.

I interpreted the question a little differently.  

[angus]

Abramsverse

I believe that The Kelvin Timeline is the officially-sanctioned, politically correct term.  

That said, I agree that the Prime Timeline is superior, although both are apparently canonical.  

Voted somewhat interested.  I have watched probably every episode of Star Trek and Star Trek:  The Next Generation.  I still watch reruns of those two series regularly, although I'm not a fan of the other franchise programs.  I do enjoy the movies, and have adapted to the Kelvin Timeline, but obviously the Prime Timeline is an easier sell.  

As an aside, we're almost finished with the USS Enterprise that I bought for Christmas.  Just finished step 71 of part 3.  We're probably 3/4 of the way through, but it's careful work.  We may or may not be finished in time for my 50th birthday.

[angus]

The OP is titillating.  I suspect that it is an elaborate tease to get us to watch, like when they advertising King of the Hill as "moving" in the summer of 1999 and show a political map of California in the background (in the words "of the" between King and Hill) instead of the usual Texas political map that was usually shown.  It turns out that they were moving to a new day and time.

I'm thinking maybe the Tarsus 4 incident.  Here's a brief historical description from Memory Alpha:

In 2246, an exotic fungus destroyed most of the colony's food supply, leaving the colonists, of which there were eight thousand, in serious danger of starvation. Governor Kodos made a drastic decision: he ordered the deaths of four thousand colonists, so that the other four thousand might live, selecting those to be killed according to his personal theories of eugenics. Supply ships arrived earlier than expected, but too late to save the four thousand people Kodos murdered. All that Earth Forces found of Kodos was a burned body, and he was presumed dead, until his chance discovery on Planet Q twenty years later.

Among the survivors of the Tarsus IV incident were James T. Kirk, Kevin Riley, and Thomas Leighton, who were three of only nine survivors who knew Kodos' face, and who would be able to identify him. In 2266, they were the only three of the original nine eyewitnesses still alive.

In 2328, Tarsus IV was the destination for passengers traveling from Gamma Trianguli VI via commercial transports. Zayra Cabot had traveled on the SS Manoa, Jack Litchfeld had traveled on the SS Kogin, and David Stipes and Lorine Mendell had traveled on the SS Wisconsin.



The episode title was "The Conscience of the King" if you want to try to look it up.  It was on pretty recently, about a week ago, so that's maybe why it is on my mind. 

[angus]

Finished it today!  3198 pieces.

Last night it snowed about 12 inches and all three of us had a snow day.  After we got tired of sledding and chunking snowballs at each other, we decided to finish the project we started the day after Christmas.

Behold the USS Enterprise: