Alternate History in Star Trek Part 19: Charting the New* Frontier

[Gary Oswald]

Discuss this article by @Thande here

 

[Thande]

AKA the one where I somehow spend a whole article rambling about the pilot episode and never mention AH at all (except in the sense of how it could've been done differently).

Can't circulate this right now as am in a lab, but will do so later.

Also I like how the image Gary used has the short-lived 'silhouetted oval delta' logo that was briefly used as Generic Star Trek post-Generations.

 

[Charles EP M.]

The snarky BSG reference reminds me of how in the bible for BSG - floating around the net - Ron Moore goes out of his way to go how This Isn't Star Trek and a chunk of the early stuff is very clearly in retrospect "how I'd have done Voyager and it'd have been better". Ironically, BSG ends up often dropping the nitty-gritty of low resources, far from home, and how (non-Fleet) people feel because the writers didn't actually want to focus on rations after all, and the later years are full of the same sparkly quasi-new-age visions 'n' prophecies that Trek often played with (esp. in DS9) but it always felt 'off' in the more visually grounded and hard-scifi leaning show.

(Double fun was seeing First Contact after BSG and when the sexy Borg Queen here to do sexy sex stuff shows up, I went "oh that's the bit Moore wrote then")

 

[Thande]

The snarky BSG reference reminds me of how in the bible for BSG - floating around the net - Ron Moore goes out of his way to go how This Isn't Star Trek and a chunk of the early stuff is very clearly in retrospect "how I'd have done Voyager and it'd have been better". Ironically, BSG ends up often dropping the nitty-gritty of low resources, far from home, and how (non-Fleet) people feel because the writers didn't actually want to focus on rations after all, and the later years are full of the same sparkly quasi-new-age visions 'n' prophecies that Trek often played with (esp. in DS9) but it always felt 'off' in the more visually grounded and hard-scifi leaning show.

(Double fun was seeing First Contact after BSG and when the sexy Borg Queen here to do sexy sex stuff shows up, I went "oh that's the bit Moore wrote then")

Andromeda is the other one that had the emphsis of This Isn't Star Trek, and similarly couldn't quite figure out what it was, then.

 

[Charles EP M.]

Farscape also is doing a very aggressive "WE'RE NOT STAR TREK" at the start but knows what it does want to be - a rude show that shows off "look what the Jim Henson Creature Shop can do, you should hire us" - and everything follows from that, because the Creature Shop were weirdos.

Doctor Who in 2005 has the bit where Rose is saying he's not "Spock" enough which tells you how much Trek overshadows sci-fi because even as Trek is leaving TV, gotta explain why we're not Trek but you should watch anyway

 

[RyanF]

Higher-ups feeling a Star Trek iteration is "too cerebral"... stop me if you've heard this one before!

The Battlestar Galactica remake feels a combination of "let's do Voyager right combined with let's make it as anti-Trek as possible" to begin with and neither last beyond the first couple seasons at best. I still think they did the Voyager concept better to begin with, but pound for pound Voyager is the better programme overall considering the directions BSG went in.

It's interesting early on that there was some notion of Paris being Locarno under an assumed name. It maybe makes sense in the context of some of the conflicting reasons we've heard for not just using the earlier character as a way of having their cake and eating it too.

Personally, I think as far as looks go (and they're only hull deep) the USS Voyager is maybe the best looking ship since the Enterprise itself (NCC-1701 - no bloody A, B, C or D!) I like the idea of a smaller, specialised vessel bucking the trend of MORE ADVANCED SHIP IS BIGGER and the tilting nacelles are wholly essential to the correct way of space flying that they do.

Bob, Robbie & Robert was one of my favourite Cartoon Network programmes as a child.

How many of those visions in Star Trek pilots are subconsciously doing the Talosians in "The Cage"?

The plot and ending of "Caretaker" do telegraph a lot of the problems that would come as the show went on: a muddled plot, little in the way or real threat or stakes that don't hold up to scrutiny, a reversion to status quo at the end. Let's face it, the pilot starts out with an interesting concept then by the end of the episode has gone "This is your Daddy's Trek."

 

[Charles EP M.]

Voyager keeps getting reappraisals but never seems to properly become We Like This Now like DS9 does. Janeway and Seven get to appear as characters in other stuff so people like them on their own

 

[SpanishSpy]

It's interesting early on that there was some notion of Paris being Locarno under an assumed name. It maybe makes sense in the context of some of the conflicting reasons we've heard for not just using the earlier character as a way of having their cake and eating it too.

As a non-trekkie this sounds like a weird discussion of the post-World War I peace settlement.

 

[RyanF]

Voyager keeps getting reappraisals but never seems to properly become We Like This Now like DS9 does. Janeway and Seven get to appear as characters in other stuff so people like them on their own

I think Seven and Janeway both became icons in their own right despite their show rather than because of it. The former as Sexy Space Lady and the latter as Star Trek's Girlboss, which speaks to a passing familiarity of the characters rather than one with the television product. There's actually a comparison to be made with another popular UPN show in the 1990s getting its star over in popular culture more so than the product, he even guest starred in an episode of Voyager. We honestly don't talk enough about the Star Trek/WWF crossover of 2000.

Also, there is the issue of modern productions just mining any and all prior material they can so they don't have to put thought into the direction they want to take something or even its story. Not comparing the characters in terms of consciousness, but as much as Janeway and Seven have been brought back into the fold so too have Tegan Jovanka and Ace on Doctor Who.

 

[Thande]

I just remembered that skit with the cast of 3rd Rock from the Sun on Voyager's bridge. I can't remember the context.

Personally, I think as far as looks go (and they're only hull deep) the USS Voyager is maybe the best looking ship since the Enterprise itself (NCC-1701 - no bloody A, B, C or D!) I like the idea of a smaller, specialised vessel bucking the trend of MORE ADVANCED SHIP IS BIGGER and the tilting nacelles are wholly essential to the correct way of space flying that they do.

I had great avarice for the model when I was ten, then the nacelle motors broke almost instantly. Twice. There's a lesson in that somewhere.

As a non-trekkie this sounds like a weird discussion of the post-World War I peace settlement.

Thinking of Beta Tom Paris first rather than the place in Switzerland is a symptom of learning about the world first through Star Trek - see also thinking of Bajorans before (say) Chinese when asked to name a people who put the surname first, or having to consciously remember to say 'lefftenant' not 'lootenant', or not immediately associating a real ship name with a USS prefix as American.

 

[Masteroftheuniverse]

Doctor Who in 2005 has the bit where Rose is saying he's not "Spock" enough which tells you how much Trek overshadows sci-fi because even as Trek is leaving TV, gotta explain why we're not Trek but you should watch anyway

Would have been interesting if RTD had managed to pull off the ENT crossover he was planning.

 

[Charles EP M.]

How on Earth was that meant to work??

 

[RyanF]

How on Earth was that meant to work??

To crossover with the chat in the Doctor Who Thread, I think it's possibility is as blown up as The Dark Dimension actually being made.

Perhaps more so, truth be told.

 

[Thande]

To crossover with the chat in the Doctor Who Thread, I think it's possibility is as blown up as The Dark Dimension actually being made.

Perhaps more so, truth be told.

Yeah, I was always extremely sceptical about it as well. Wasn't it exaggerated from the fact that Enterprise had a (dead) time traveller in a pod that was bigger on the inside?

 

[Charles EP M.]

He wasn't joking when he said it, was he?

 

[M_Kresal]

He wasn't joking when he said it, was he?

Nope. RTD cited Enterprise pioneering humans throughout production of his first era and you can see the influence of it on Impossible Planet and Waters of Mars later on. And the crossover was an idea he had in the back of his mind during the pre-production of the Eccleston year. Get word that the Trek series was canceled meant RTD never took it higher than the Cardiff production office to get the ball rolling.

 

[Masteroftheuniverse]

Yeah, I was always extremely sceptical about it as well. Wasn't it exaggerated from the fact that Enterprise had a (dead) time traveller in a pod that was bigger on the inside?

It was a genuine idea but I don't think it got very far before Enterprise being cancelled killed it.

 

[Avian Overlord]

The snarky BSG reference reminds me of how in the bible for BSG - floating around the net - Ron Moore goes out of his way to go how This Isn't Star Trek and a chunk of the early stuff is very clearly in retrospect "how I'd have done Voyager and it'd have been better".

I think a certain of deliberately zigging where your genre predecessors zagged is healthy. Helps break assumptions.

 

[M_Kresal]

Depending on how you count things like Phase II versus “The Motion Picture”, VGR had one of the longest development times of any Star Trek incarnation, beginning in mid-1993, while the first episode aired in January 1995.

Strange New Worlds would like a word, I think.