Thursday, December 01, 2016

Ghosts of Things to Come: "Where No One Has Gone Before"

I'm only posting Star Trek movies every other week because of the time necessary to edit them (and also laziness). But instead of having nothing, here's a solo session for our Star Trek: The Next Generation podcast, The Beige and The Bold. I'm trying to do solo run-throughs before we record just to get the garbage out, so expect for this to be pretty rough and for some of the jokes to be repeated in the actual podcast.

5 comments:

SkilTao said...

Magicks of Megas Tu: Electric Boogaloo? I wonder if everybody calling Kazinski's equations nonsense was the writer's/director's way of calling The Traveller and his explanation nonsense. No idea why the Dr Who writing staff thought the "strengthen a magic man by thinking at him" element was good enough to swipe.

An anime called The Irresponsible Captain Tylor also did a version of this ep, but involving a cross-dimensional ghost ship, which sounds more like what you're saying about the original script than this one. Ramming a tiny Enterprise through a giant Enterprise - that like a "Farnsworth Parabox?"

Ignoring this ep and "The Naked Now," if you had a brand new series and a brand new crew, would you start with a "Naked Time"esque ep or a more "Shore Leave"esque ep to characterize 'em quick?

You don't need a telepath for what Troi does here, anyone who spent time with Kazinski could've give you the same info... Apropos of nothing: I'm sure Betazed has a long, rich history of not being humans, but I'd be pretty pleased if, after Kirk went to the galactic barrier, a ton of ESP-sensitive Federation citizens set out for the edge of the galaxy and all the survivors founded their own colony somewhere.

You guys joked (I think it was a joke) in TOS about how starfleet employs people of all ages, but it's nice that TNG noticed and continued that.

I wonder if the Scottish full dress uniform kilt evolved into the regulation daily wear skant.

VanVelding said...

Hey, MoMT at least required someone drawing a pentagram so that was some relatively solid science. This is just "feel good magic," an enterainment phenomenon I gotta sit down and describe in depth one day.

An also, hey. In "Last of the Time Lords," the satellite network made sense. The Master would enter a message into a computer or something, send it to the satellites, and the satellites would beam the idea into peoples' heads. And then when people all thought a thing together, the thought went to the satellites and fucking hell shit damn that doesn't make any sense.

It is exactly like the Farnsworth Parabox. We can only assume that in the tiny Enterprise, Deanna was played by Denise Crosby and Yar was played by Marina Sirtis.

If I had to choose between the two, I'd go for "The Naked Now." It pushes aside from pretense and naturally pairs characters up. Otherwise, I'd crib from "Disaster." Pair/trio folks off but instead of playing to their weakness, I'd play to their strengths.

I'm putting together a Reddit post about a "Pandora's Box" scenario for Star Trek. All of the technologies that get conveniently forgotten get released to the public the day after Nemesis. What happens? Galactic barrier fields and potions which give ordinary humans telepathic powers are definitely on that list.

It is interesting that Star Trek went for alien telepaths instead of human ESPers (like B5, 40k, etc). I'd say I prefer that arrangement, but that is 100% bias from Star Trek, and it's on-message reluctance to flirt with everyday transhumanism.

I haven't looked into it, but I think the skant was part of the series' pie-in-the-sky attempt at gender equality in text if not subtext.

SkilTao said...

That's a good point about transhumanism; TNG humans are surprisingly purist. The barbarity in "Up the Long Ladder" certainly adds weight to, for instance, Bashir's secret background.

Hah, I don't think I got around to considering the physics of the telepathy. I don't mind it as a piece of clever turnabout, but in Doctor Who it's another example of "we win because we want it more;" at least in TNG it's merely buttressing the solution they were going to use anyways. As a dramatic element (expressing the characters' emotional solidarity), I have--pardon the expression--mixed feelings about it.

That Pandora's Box is probably how Enterprise started - day trips to the Guardian of Forever can only ever end well.

SkilTao said...

PS: I'll try to keep an eye out for the Reddit post, but odds are I won't notice it 'til the New Year.

VanVelding said...

It's become some kind of half-baked time war theory that's been put on the backburner, sadly.