I think I stand corrected. A bunch of looking around yesterday returned nothing. I could have sworn that there was a bunch of buzz prior to the movie that it was somebody else, Andorians or some such, that was passing through our solar system at the time. Oh well.

Are you saying all "trophy wives" are very, very, very stupid?

You know, while many moralists (especially, but not exclusively, on the Left) bemoan the "trophy wife" phenomenon, that phenomenon actually indicates how censorious American society really is. European politicians and business moguls do not have trophy wives -- they have trophy mistresses. They do not need to go through divorce (and associated financial losses) in order to enjoy young babes. Remember President Mitteran's funeral, attended by his wife, his mistress, and the children from both? Just imagine that at the funeral of an American politician.

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

Just a quick observation. I can clearly remember seeing commercials for the very first Star Trek movie. What stands out the most in my memory was the scene of the three Klingon battle cruisers firing torpedoes. That was in the commercial. It was a big part of the commercial. It made you think that the movie was going to be about space battles.

The movie was not about space battles.

I can remember tv commercials for Star Trek VI. Almost the entire commercial consisted of the klingon captain quoting Shakespeare while torpedoes slammed into Enterprise. The commercial made you think that a major part of the movie would be a fight between this klingon ship and Enterprise.

But the movie wasn't about that. In fact, the whole movie sucked and the big battle scene was a major letdown. "Gas" Spock says. And that's the end of it. Blah!

I can think of a dozen such examples in the Star Trek universe. Most recently, in Star Trek Nemesis, the Romulans build this supposedly powerful ship. Supposedly, there's a major battle between that ship and some federation ships. That's all off-camera of course. I didn't pay attention to the commercials, but I'd be willing to bet they made it look like we'd get a space battle.

This is why I no longer consider myself a fan of star trek. Why can't they figure out this simple fact: space ships are cool. People want to see them shooting stuff.

No thank you. I prefer politicians who at least pay lip service to moral behavior.

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"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky

Star Trek isn't supposed to be about space battles - it's supposed to be about exploring new worlds and dealing with strange aliens and cultures. If you want space battles we have Star Wars for that.

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"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky

Ilya wrote:
Degenerate Europeans...


Tofu wrote:
You think Undiscovered Country sucked!?!? Strange, that's usually considered to be the best Trek movie(by critics anyway). I like First Contact more though.

KAAAAAHN!!!!













(or is it khaaaan!..)

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"Oh, you'd be surprised at the things you can learn when you're doing alterations."

Way back pre-TNG I had a book called something like "Scotty's Guide to Star Trek" or something like that. I sure wish I still had it.

Anyhow, I don't know how cannon it was, but it claimed that first contact between Humans and another species happened thusly:

Earth sent a sublight sleeper ship to the nearest star, Alpha Centauri. There they found an intelligent race of humanoids that look very much like humans. they had a bit of a scalp ridge, but that was mostly covered by hair. You had to look real close to tell the difference.

(I think that like Klingons, the did the best they could with the makeup budget/technology.)

They started learning each other's langauge by starting with comparing math--here's pi, etc.

One of the chief mathematicians on A. Centauri was Zephram Cochran, who had some neat ideas about waping space. With the new insights from these visiting earthmen, he was able to make a breakthrough.

With his new warp drive, they zipped back to earth. They then started exploring the galaxy, and I believe the Vulcans (around Epsilon Eridani) were next in line.

Again, I don't know how cannon that book was supposed to be, but I like it a lot better than First Contact's version. In the book's version, NO ONE had warp technology in the Alpha quadrant before Cochran. That's why he was so revered.

(After what I percieve as a retcon from First Contact, I can't figure out why anyone cares about Cochran. How about the Vulcan who came up with Warp? Or who came up with it first ever. Name the units of warp field strength after HIM, not Cochran. End of rant.)

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Jeff Schwarz
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Argh!! They booby-trapped their sun!!****--Invader ZIM

yeah, I've thought the same thing myself. Star Trek is sickeningly humancentric. At least on Andromeda (a very bad show, even worse than Enterprise) Humans joined an organization that already spawned 3 galaxies:P.

Putting all that aside though, Starfleet is a human organization. It was started by humans, and it is run almost entirely by humans (voyager had what, 15 non-humans onboard?). Although Starfleet is the Federation's primary explorationary and therefore diplomatic organization (when contacting new races), it does not fill every roll around. It is not the exclusive military organization in the Federation (in fact, Starfleet is not even allowed to build military vessels); they are only permitted to put enough weapons on their ships to defend themselves, and help anyone they might happen to come across.

Up until very recently (the cardasian war, just before the start of TNG) starfleet had virtually no military roll at all. Each starsystem defended itself as best it could (the federation is basically like the United Nations. They are not actually a single nation). Only when this was obviously not enough was starfleet permitted to begin actively arming their ships (they were mostly disarmed after the peace treaty with the klingons in ST:VI). Before this the cardasian war, humans had starfleet, vulcans had the Vulcan Science Acadamy etc etc.

More recently Starfleet has begun to take on more and more power, and it now has a fairly large military force in addition to its scientific fleet. Much of this fleet buildup was due to the Borg

Therefore it really makes some small amount of sense that Starfleet is so human centered. But it still bugs me.

Somewhere, I think it was in Star Fleet Battles, (yes it's two words instead of Starfleet) maybe Mr. Scott's Guide, they talked about ship crews and it made a lot of sense.

Starships tended to be certain race oriented because it simplified the environmental controls. I.E. Vulcan is suppose to have a higher gravity (some of the novels mentioned that it felt like you "climbed" into his quarters) and so all their ships were at 1.1 or 1.2 g (whatever the Vulcan gravity is). Some races had atmospheres that were toxic to others. So rather than having ships divided into sections tailored for each race and the force the on-duty crew to work in space suits if the environment was harmful, Starfleet tried to keep compatible races together. But there was some crossover like Vulcans and Andorians on mainly human vessels.

But, unfortuantly, that never made it into the shows.

Actually, I almost consider the Star Fleet Battles (and the Federation & Empire campaign game) far more "true" Star Trek than what the shows have become. The politics was intriguing, there was a great timeline and few continuity problems. Man I wish I could find people locally that play.

[edit, edit, edit]

ah right! I forgot about that. Andorians for instance like it to be much colder than humans do. It wouldn't make sense to have a human/andorian ship, because you would have to average the temperature out so that they could both survive. Then the humans would always be freezing and the Andorians would be boiling.

I wish that had made it onto the shows. I'd love to see an andorian Galaxy class Starship with a shiney silver-blue interior instead of that cruddy brown colour the Enterprise is

It's KHAAAAAN!!!! but close enough...

gopher65 wrote:
Andromeda had only a handfull of characteres on board while on Trek there were always a lot of extras walking around, so it's a lot easier to keep them humans than do alien make up on 3/4 of them. There could have been more Vulcans though, considering how important they were in the federation, you didn't see too much of them. Would the (trek)world have been ready for a Vulcan captain on say Voyager?

Too bad about how Andromeda turned out, it had a great premise and first two seasons.

Coukd it be that Humans just procreate faster than all the other species? :-)

Wasn't the USS Intrepid from TOS an all vulcan starship?

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When I die I want to go peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather. Not screaming in terror, like his passengers.

I see it this way: humans are unusual in having: (1) very advanced technologies; (2) a large, highly educated population; (3) multiple talents as compared to one-noters like the warrior Klingons or the intellectual Vulcans or the telepathic Beta-Zeds; (4) successfully channeled a highly aggressive nature into a powerful cultural urge to work and achieve.

Also, maybe it's unusual for a species to go from the first heavier-than-air flying machines to walking on the moon in the space of one lifetime. I'm sure there were people who heard about the Wright brothers and lived to see the first Moon landing.

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It's not what we don't know that harms us;
it's what we do know that ain't so.

Yep. A man lived in my grandparent's town who was born in the late 1890s and who was still alive as of 1997.

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Quaeso quousque humi defixa tua mens erit? Nonne aspicis, quae in templa veneris?

One of the novelizations (I don't recall the title, but I believe it was by pro SF writer Joe Haldeman) called attention to a logical feature of Vulcan eyesight. Vulcan eyes are evolved for desert glare. Most likely, this would mean Vulcan eyes are relatively insensitive to light. The extra eyelid wouldn't suffice. That just enables them to block very intense light, not to see in it.

So in the novel, Spock is night blind: unable to see at all in what is simply dim light to humans, like twilight. The Enterprise loses power and Spock has to use a high-intensity searchlight for a flashlight.

Other SF writers have seriously addressed the question of what humans might be unusually good at due to our evolution. One interesting suggestion is endurance running; marathons and the like. Our ancestors jogged across savannahs, running down game too big to kill outright with clubs and stone-tipped spears.

It would have been nice to see a Trek episode in which a human is going to run a long distance. A Klingon decides he can keep up with a mere human, and is told by Worf "Don't be foolish. A human can run three of us into the ground without breathing hard."

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It's not what we don't know that harms us;
it's what we do know that ain't so.

Well, the Klingons aren't the most physically capable species, remember. They are big, but, as the crew of DS9 has shown, that's all show.

(Come to think of it, I've never seen a Klingon perform any feat of extraordinary strength. :-? )