An earth-shaking question just occurred to me:

How come, on "Star Trek: The Next Generation," when the Borg wiped out the entire Federation battle fleet, the Romulans or Ferengi or Klingons or someone the hell or other or all of the above didn't move in and start grabbing Federation territory willy nilly?

Hoo boy. Now you've done it. All this time we've managed to pretty much stay under the radar of the Geek Patrol. We've been so careful.

And now you go and unzip our collective fly by starting a Star Trek plot hole thread. What's next? A Doctor Who episode breakdown thread? A Gillian Anderson Estrogen Brigade thread? Have you no sense of decency, at long last, sir?

Amanpour

How about why the characters on Gilligan's Island never changed clothes? Or how they made electronics out of coconuts. Or how they could make gourmet food from coconuts and bananas. Or how the Howell's are the only ones who salvaged clothes and money from the ship, but everyone else left everything on it?

"Have you no sense of decency, at long last, sir?"

Wasn't that the title of a "Doctor Who" episode?

Well, enough of the fleet survived to make it painful? I'd also imagine the proud Klingons have a problem with the "willy nilly" part. Good question oviously the Feds got lucky post Wolf 349.

As far as Gilligan goes... jeez Mek, Gilligan was just a fake TV show. Get with the program.

-Andrew

From searching USENET, consensus seems to be that the 39 ships destroyed at Wolf 359 was a small percentage of the fleet, and the Romulans were occupied with other things, like saving their own ass from the Borg.

Man, people on USENET make us look like amateurs.

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=romulans+borg+wolf+359&start=10&hl=en&rnum=17&selm=4at3mr%248gi%40news.nstn.ca

I was bored and flipping around the USENET archives earlier. I think I stumbled across the greatest USENET thread ever: combining Star Trek and Hitler.

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&threadm=13384%40umd5.umd.edu&rnum=6&prev=/groups%3Fas_q%3Dgenocide%2520hugh%2520picard%26hl%3Den

I particularly like the Goering-Riker connection.

In an attempt to send my dork meter off the scale:

I finally realized what seemed so familiar about the Borg: Orwell. That, and I found this absolutely hilarious analysis of Star Trek as an imperialistic, sexist, racist tract:

http://www.mind-force.net/library/01/02_22.htm

"What's next? A Doctor Who episode breakdown thread?"

Since you mention it, I'd like to bitch about the half-ass release strategy for the Doctor Who DVD episodes. I mean, they do Robots of Death right from the start, which is all well and good, but then they follow it up with super-crappy episodes like "The Five Doctors" and a bunch of non-Tom Baker discs. What the hell is up with that? And why the slow release schedule? It's not like they are producing scads of extras for the discs. They need to get their heads out of their asses and just release ALL the Tom Baker eps, right now. Dammit.

Just had to air that grievance. Sorry.

I'll never understand that whole "Only 39 ships were destroyed, and only 40 were involved".

The Borg were heading to Earth...center of the Federation, birthplace of man, and they only brought in 40 ships? They knew about the progress of the Borg cube for weeks. The Enterprise was out near the neutral zone, intercepted the Borg, was incapacitated for a few days, and still managed to get to Wolf 359 mere hours after the fight was over. And we're to believe that 40 ships was all they could muster?

Honestly, I think that when that episode was made, they thought 40 was a bunch. It wasn't until Deep Space 9 that we saw things like a fleet of hundreds of Federation ships dueling with hundreds of Dominion ships. (By the way: best frig'n season of any Star Trek ever. The Federation at war is what that series needed, and it handled it well. Babylon 5 showed that a show is much more interesting when there is a true enemeny for the protaganists to deal with).

Ok, here's one. There was a next gen episode where a couple of the Enterprise crew got out of phase with the universe or something. They could see everyone but no one could see them. They could also walk through walls.

Now why didn't they fall through the floor if they could walk through walls?

THAT'S A GAPING PLOT HOLE.

I'm also a bit skeptical about humans, vulcans, and klingons being able to interbreed. We're very close to being chimpanzees, genetically, yet we can't breed with them. So we can breed with vulcans?

The show's kind of fake, really. It may be "science fiction" but I bet real scientists like Bruce Geryk probably call it "fiction fiction" when they're chatting about it among themselves with no lay people around.

I seem to recall one of the movies (must have been one of the sucky ones) that said all the races were seeded by some old galactic race. This was supposed to explain why most of the aliens they met were humanoidish. Or maybe that was a dream.

Dunno why they wouldn't fall through the floor. How could they even breathe? Chalk it up to Star Treks great history of writing the physics to match the plot. What they needed were some 'energon' cubes and a bunch of cars that turned into robots. Now that would be a show!

Star Trek has never bothered explaining itself at all. Especially the frig'n movies.

I'm sorry, but the movie where the borg travel back in time to stop humanity from reaching space was dumb to the Nth degree. "Hey, look, the Borg have a time machine...but they just now decided it was time to use it. Well yeah, they were coming to attack us, but apparently they never bothered thinking about using their time travel until we destroyed their ship". A race that would time travel would take over the whole galaxy, period. You could never stop them.

And the way they changed the Borg pisses me off. They went from being a universal hive mind that only had one goal: perfection through absorption, to a race governed by emotion and revenge. When they first attacked Earth, it wasn't to destroy it. They saw the Federation technology and realized it would better their race. So they went to Eath to assimilate the humans (since humans would better their population as a whole) and absorb their technology.

Now each ship has a Borg queen? All you have to do is destroy her and the fight is over? If that was true, then they WOULD be upset when people were on their ship. One of the cool things about the Borg cubes was that they didn't care if you beamed on board. You weren't bothering them, weren't causing trouble, and weren't a threat, so they let you walk around. Until crew members started destroying recharge stations, they were ignored. That was so neat: a race where the ships were the body and the individuals were the mind and inner workings. Great concept, and one I am annoyed that they changed.

There's a Trek anecdote that does like this:
Journalist: Tell me how the transporters work.
Star Trek Set Designer: Very well, thank you.

could be apocryphal.

-Andrew

Sure this is a Trek thread but screw it. I thought this was funny:

http://factorq.net/jon/joncam.JPG

Modern Star Trek has become the poster child for lazy writing. Every episode has a resolution that is pulled out of someone's ass in the last 2 minutes and usually involves some techonological bs that has never been mentioned before. That would be fine and dandy if there was any humanity to these episodes, but they are usual clinics on curing insomnia, just watch any episode of Voyager and see how long you last. The sad thing is I loved Star Trek once upon a time. The original series maybe be goofy looking and full of overacting but it was also entertaining, insightful and had some relevance. The original Star Trek had the characters be the focal point and wrote the episodes around them, Star Trek these days cares nothing for its legacy and writes each episode about whatever gaseous anamoly the producers created in the morning after a night of bad food.

Chris

For the future of Sci-fi Television writing turn to the SciFi channel and watch Farscape. The continuous story and changing core of characters is the only way to go. I think Jim Henson's son is a chip off the old block (his son's the producer).

Oh, and Buffy TVS rocks too.

It was all downhill after TNG.

Problem is, I missed a few episodes and suddenly had no idea what was going on in Farscape. I turned it on and the grey sex chick was there and I'm wondering if this is the same show.

Never was able to get back into it at that point. Every time I watched an episode I spent more time wondering what the hell was going on then watching the current episode's plot.

Babylon 5 from the 3rd season on had that same problem. If you weren't watching at least 2 episodes every 3 weeks, you didn't know what was happening. Sure, the current episode made sense, but the backround and characters just wouldn't fit into your knowledge.

Yeah, I really like Buffy alot. I tried to watch Farscape but couldn't get into it, by that time I was getting a tad burnout with all the syndicated shows. That plus I remember getting into Earth: The Final Conflict at the same time and getting pissed when they basically retooled the show and trashed the first season. Oddly enough I rarely watch anything on a regular basis anymore, aside from Buffy and the Simpsons. I'm just tired of the crap I guess. I may pick up the Farscape DVDs and check them out sometime though.

Watch Lexx's third season. Best pieces of sci-fi written ever.

Period.

One word my syndicated-enslaved friends: TIVO.

It will change your life (I'm not vouching for how, but it will, mark my words).

"I seem to recall one of the movies (must have been one of the sucky ones) that said all the races were seeded by some old galactic race."

It was a TNG episode (a 2-parter I think). They basically decoded a message that was made up of pieces of different genetic codes or some such thing. All the races were racing (bad pun intended) to finish the thing because they thought it was the key to some new weapon or something like that I think.

"Now why didn't they fall through the floor if they could walk through walls?"

Yeah, I tried not to wonder about that when I saw that episode, same goes with the breathing...

If you're a B5 fan, I highly recommend the Passing of the Technomages book trilogy. It's "Based on an original outline by J. Michael Straczynski." I'm on the third book right now, and it's just awesome. The trilogy has the same great character development and plot forshadowing (pun not intended) as the series. There are parts of the book whose dialogue is lifted directly from the episode where the technomages come to Babylon 5, and the tie-ins to the series are seamless.

I agree that B5 would be hard to stay into once the 3rd season started if you couldn't watch each episode. On the other hand, I think B5's strength was the continuity of it's timeline, and the fact that it had a beginning, middle and end.

"The trilogy has the same great character development and plot forshadowing (pun not intended) as the series."

And the author's pretty cute, too.

http://www.sff.net/people/jcavelos/

""I seem to recall one of the movies (must have been one of the sucky ones) that said all the races were seeded by some old galactic race."

It was a TNG episode (a 2-parter I think). They basically decoded a message that was made up of pieces of different genetic codes or some such thing. All the races were racing (bad pun intended) to finish the thing because they thought it was the key to some new weapon or something like that I think."

In the original series that was brought up also (the one where Kirk, Spock, and a female let some diembodied aliens use their bodies.) Kirk said something like the evidience is that Humans evolved independently, Spock said something about filling in holes in Vulcan evolution. I watch way too much.

BTW, the way I see it, noting a plot hole in Star Trek is like noting that grass is green. That sounds more surley than I intend, please read it with a "light" tone.

TNT was hero whe it came to B5. The show was on every day at 5:00 - 6:00 and then 10:00 - 11:00 (same episode). They showed every episode chronologically, so you could watch an entire season in 5 weeks. It was great, I got to see everything I missed over the course of 4 months (they only showed the first 4 seasons. They were making season 5 when TNT bought the syndication rights). It wasn't until I could see them all in order, one day after another, that I really appreciated the show.

B5 is arguably the best written, plotted, and developed sci-fi series that I've ever seen.

There's a brand new Babylon 5 movie that will air January 19th. I keep seeing previews for it when I'm walking around Blockbuster. It chronicles the history of the Rangers. It looks high budget too. Every time the preview comes on in there it makes me turn and look. I'm pretty excited to see it.

--Dave

>B5 is arguably the best written, plotted, and developed sci-fi series that I've ever seen

But terribly acted.

Stefan

B5 had some terrific acting, usually from Andreas Katsulas as G'kar and Peter Jurasik as Londo Mollari, though at times Mira Furlan as Delenn and Bruce Boxleitner as Sheridan had some outstanding moments. Like any other show, it had it's ups and downs. TNG had Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner, but it also had everyone else...

Chris

'B5 is arguably the best written, plotted, and developed sci-fi series that I've ever seen.'

It also has serious writing problems if you can't appreciate the series while missing an episode or two. What's the point?

"It also has serious writing problems if you can't appreciate the series while missing an episode or two. What's the point?"

Well, the central plot was amazing. Every episode was stand alone, but it furthered the central plot. So you could enjoy each episode on its own, but you would start to miss out on the central plot. For example, when B5 broke off from Earth, it culminated over the course of several episodes. If you happened to miss the 2 episodes where they officially break off and receive their new uniforms, you will have lost a huge plot point to the central plot of the season. You'll find yourself asking "Ok, cool episode, but why the hell are those Earth ships attacking the station?"

It was like a season long movie with each season being a sequel and each episode being a scene.

One odd note on the acting. The dude who played the doctor on Babylon 5 previously played a doctor on one of the remade Twilight Zone episodes Straczynski was story editor on. Talk about yer typecasting!

"Gee, I need a doctor for this show... A-ha!"

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It also has serious writing problems if you can't appreciate the series while missing an episode or two. What's the point?

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