Tracey

Seeing as how that Galaxy class in DS9 is winning in the polls. I decided to rewatch that episode yesterday. The ship is the Oddessy, and its the second season finale called "Jem'Hadar". The first time I watched it was years ago and I just found it cool as to how cruel the Jem'hadar actually were to make a suicide run at the Oddessy as they limp back to the wormhole. This was something I thought I'd never see in Trek. However, now that I am older and wiser? I watched it in a different way and was let down by a few things. First of all, the Oddessy fired phasers only. No torpedos. And only fired twice. This surprised me seeing that Keough seemed to be much more military minded than other starship captains I have seen in the shows. So why only two phaser shots? Was there something wrong with his ship before going to battle? I find that difficult to belive. They went through the wormhole not for diplomatic purposes. The Galaxy class is able to fire continuous blasts of both phasers and torpedos. This was seen against the Hushnok and the Q-Who episodes. This ship should have beat those three Jem'Hadar ships, or at least given them a much better fight. But this lack of using this type of defence was a direct result that led to the situation seen in Generations. Second of all, why did the Dominion only send three ships? If they wanted to send a message to the Alpha Quadrant, they should have sent a lot more than three ships. Lastly, I don't understand what the purpose of that suicide run was? It would have hurt the moralle of the Feds moerso if the Oddessy would have gone back, defeated, with a gaping hole in its hull, after 10 minutes in the Gamma Quadrant.

Watch TOS show the Corbomite Manuvre where Kirk defeats an unbeatable (ball?) using tehnobabble. It shows how Kirk will do anything to win. But like other starship Captains I have seen, Kirk is a very lucky man. About the Hathaway. First of all Picard was not very smart. He outguns the Hathaway by like a million to one. As soon as that supposedly super tactician alien said let the games begin, and Picard starts those silly manuvres, that super tactician should have told Picard he failed the test. If Picard would have thrown everything he had at the Hathaway immediately, Riker would have had no chance. Again, Riker took advantage of being lucky and that he had Worf to confuse the Enterprise sensors making them believe it saw a Romulan Warbird. But thats the Picard manuvre I know. Take it slow and allow the enemy to do extensive damage before fighting back. Like Kirk, Picard is very lucky to be alive, but in a different way. Also, the Feds must have caught on that these super tactician aliens were not very good, because we see none of them during the Dominion war. If they were that good, they'd be everywhere giving advice, but they're nowhere to be seen.

Congrats to you all. But I have one question, Commander Devar. Why is your banner so much larger than the others?

Fist of all, I found DS9 to be very good. It had character development. Both the enemies as well as the regular characters were developed well, around tremendous special effects. The DS9 writers and producers did a good job intertwining character development with awsome special effects. The difference between DS9 and Voyager/Enterprise, is that they stayed true to the Trek ways (i.e. character development and continuity). I liked DS9 because I liked the characters within. I could relate to them because they were more 3 dimensional than the yes sir no sir characters I have seen on both Voyager as well as Enterprise. OK Next question... Due to Kahn Noonian Singh, humanity and the UFP has passed laws forbidding the use of genetic engineering to "improve the species" or some such. Yet genetically modified children bred at Darwin Station has telepathy, telekenisis, and an immune system which can broadcast antibodies. How was this allowed?

If I'm not mistaken, wasn't Riker ready to commit suicide by ramming the Borg cube with the Enterprise (with the children on board). If not for Data, they'd all be dead. They defeated the cube because of luck. There was no skill here. Especially not on the part of Riker. In what episode did Riker face Picard in a tactical situation?

Then lets say what good she did, she destory most of the borg collective saving the federation from the borg. So also brought back new technoly like ablative armor generators, transfasic torpedos, new cloaking device, and a slipstream drive. I mean come on how many advances where made. And she didn't lose to much of her crew. So leave her alone, or we could just start a vote to settle it? I guess rules are not rules when the ends justify the means. I've never been a big fan of the Prime Directive. I consider it a cop out for the Feds for many reasons that I'm not going to list here. It deserves its own thread. However, I was let down by the show and Janeway because I thought that after the first episode I watched that I was going to see a different kind of Captain, an almost Kirk-like Captain. I was let down quickly thereafter due to her wishy-washyness. For this I blame the writers of the show. There was little or no character development, except for the holographic Doctor and Seven of Nine, and the show became a showcase for only special effects. I realize that alot of the people in this group grew up on the shows that came after TOS and maybe some of you only began watching Trek during Voyager's run, so I could understand how you look at Trek from this perspective. Not to be a salesman or anything, but watch TOS episodes like the Cage or the Menagerie, or City on the Edge of Forever, or the TNG episode where Picard is transfered to that planet where he has to learn to talk to that alien Captain, or the one where that probe forces Picard to live a lifetime on that planet. These were tremendous character building episodes. Who cares about the technology or the anomolies or time travel nonsense. That should only be tools to aid in the development of these types of storylines. Voyager could have and should have had all these things, but the writers of this show forgot what Trek was all about. Recent manifestations of Star Trek have turned me off. Enterprise and its inconsistencies with the rest of Trek and Voyager with the anomaly of the week, that's not for me

I rewatched that destruction scene in Generations and came to these conclusions. The saucer held up pretty well after being shot up, caught in an Antimatter explosion's shockwave, going through the atmosphere at high speed and finally crashing on a planet and eradicating 10 km of forest. As far as I could tell in the crash landing scene there were two window faliures, that is all. The bridge dome and a single forward window shattered. Seeing as most did not and the ones that slammed through the rock didn't shatter, that would indicate that these two window sets had defects. Given how many windows were on the entire ship, this isn't entirely unreasonable. Just means the Federation needs to stop putting so many windows on their ships. Conclusion. For a hull that is so thin and has so many windows, it is remakarbly tough. As for the children. I'm not so sure they'd leave them off the ship. Many times Picard and company went charging into immenent danger (i.e. the Romulan Neutral Zone) with the children still on board.

Hmmm...where should I begin. Ah yes. How about with the very first episode where Janeway blatently defies the Prime Directive by destroying the caretaker, thus altering the natural evolution of the Delta Quadrant. The Kazon cannot therefore use the array to defeat Kes's people. This unilateral decision also leads to Voyager, as well as the Maquis crew, being stranded in the Delta Quadrant. In and of itself, I would think that perhaps this Janeway character would not be the atypical Starfleet Officer. But lo and behold, throughout the series she boasts about Starfleet's Directives, but defies them whenever she wishes (i.e. Species 8472). But when given opportunities to get home, or make their trip shorter, or anything else that would make the Voyager crew more comfortable, she would deny this while quoting Starfleet Directives, whether it would be the Prime Directive or the Temporal Prime Directive as was noted all the way through this series to the final episode. Add a singing doctor and an ugly ship design and a former Borg drone that acts like a Vulcan... Hope you get my point.

Curious I wonder how many children were on that Galaxy class before it went out to face the Jem'hadar?

Now that Voyager is Back on Earth, what became of the former Maquis members who joined the crew? Personally, I would execute them. Then I would execute Seven of Nine for being a Borg agent. After that, I would execute Janeway by shooting her through a torpedo tube into the sun. Then I would blow up Voyager by using it for target practice. But thats just me

I had no idea who this Jellico guy was until I watched the two part episode once again and I recalled that name. Firstly, Picard was amazing. All that torture and not once breaking. Picard: "There are FOUR lights" (one of the best lines in TNG) Secondly, I liked Jellico, the guy was brilliant. He managed to force the Cardies invasion force to retreat and get Picard back, and he didn't even have to shed any blood on either side. Thirdly, David Warner who played the Cardassian was awsome. Forthly Deanna Troi's whine to Jellico about how the crew wasn't used to him and they need reasurance and positive reenforcement or something like that and Jellico basicly tells her where to go and get over it! Also got Troi to put on a STARFLEET uniform. Lastly, but not leastly, he found Riker to be as bad a first officer as I always thought he was. Great episode. Wish there were more Captains like him in Star Trek.

Just another tidbit It looked to me like the crewman who flew into space was the tall guy from the Drew Carey show. Was it him? Forgot his name.

OK Now for the next question... The first pilot for Star Trek was made in 1963 and Jeffrey Hunter played Captain Pike. The first officer was Majel Barrett who played number 1 and Spock smiled and had other emotional outbursts. The show was never picked up by the networks and so was never made again for another three years. In 1966, a new pilot is made. This one has William Shatner as Kirk, Gary Mitchell as first officer and the now emotionless Spock as second officer. What if this version was never made? What if the first version made it to the air? How do you think this would affect the Star Trek universe as we know it today?

There are lots others, but I just cant't remember them all off the top of my head. Please remind us if you can of any other gut wrenching (or cool ) destroyed ships in ST. Oh well, for me it was the Enterprise in Star Trek III. It was like the end of something. And the way the saucer section slowly blew to pieces and the engineering section flying through the sky...well, kinda brought a tear to the eye. Kirk "My God, Bones! What have I done?" McCoy "What you had to do. What you always do. Turned death into a fighting chance to live."

Too bad you can't vote for more than one. They were all pretty bad except for TWOK. The oly other movie I'd say was pretty good was TSFS only because of the Enterprise blowing up. That gives me an idea for a new poll.

Makes sense. Thanks. O.K. Next question. In Nemesis...what happened to the Prime Directive? When they detected B-4, they found out that he was on a pre-warp industrial world. Now, it's their ultimate imperative that they do not influence or interfere in the course of any pre-warp societies history or interfere in the politics of other nations. Did Picard forget this? I find it hard to believe, considering he was expounding it all through TNG. So what was the deal in Nemesis? First, the parked his highly visible starship in a medium orbit and hoped that no one on the surface noticed. Geordi claimed there was an ion storm nearby that could head their way, and prevent them from transporting. But that doesn't mean it's there yet! Why didn't they beam the positron sources up to the Enterprise before the ion storm reached their position and take off? That way, they didn't have to go to the surface at all, which minimizes the chance that they'd be noticed. Defying explaination, Jean Luc "Mr. Prime Directive" Picard decided to fly down in his new toy, the Argo, a shuttle/dunebuggy combo. I can see the appeal, though the dunebuggy looked like it wasn't meant for offroad (it had leaf springs... you'd think they'd want coil springs for off-road). Of course, they failed to notice that the positron emissions were coming from an half and hour or so drive by outside a settlement. Naturally, the primitives noticed and were understandably upset that an alien craft violated their airspace and aliens were driving around their territory, thus rolled out with tanks and their own dunebuggies to apprehend the ETs (Picard and gang). I'm sure our military would do the same, really. So what did Picard do? Have the Enterprise beam them and the dunebuggy out and then fly the Argo back by remote, thus minimizing contact? Of course not! They started shooting at them! Wow, using your rayguns on locals who have every right to be angry at you is a great way avoid influencing the history of primitives... not. Now, not only do the locals have to deal with the society shaking fact that they aren't alone in the universe, but that the aliens with the advanced technology are hostile. Oh, that's not going to effect their history at all! Shouldn't Picard be punnished for this?

This site has tons of screenshots from the series. The script is dark, but the links are great. http://ezridax.34sp.com/DS9.html

The first question is about the following dialogue in ST:VI. Spock : Then we will visually inspect each torpedo. Scotty : That could take hours! Does this line of dialogue mean anything? In the Enterprise series, we see torpedoes are stored in "racks". In ST:II we see torpedoes are lowered down some crane into torpedo tubes. Could it mean that torpedoes are stored in some sort of special storage area to prevent accidental detonation, meaning each torpedo has to be brought out individually one by one and then put back in? Or does it mean that the Enterprise-Nil had way more torpedoes than Enterprise-D, on the order of a thousand or so torpedoes? At the very least, it shows that they do not store torpedoes in racks like in Enterprise by the Enterprise-Nil time period, or Valaris or Scotty or whoever could just get 100 crewmen and finish the visual inspection in 15 minutes.

When it came to military tactics, all of them were just plain horrible. But the worst military officer had to be Riker. When he took command, if I was on that ship, I'd pray for my life, in a combat situation. PICARD: Because with the Borg threat, I have decided that my officers and I need to hone our tactical skills. In a crisis situation, it is prudent to have several options. RIKER: I still prefer brains over brawn. I think it's a waste of effort to test our combat skills -- it's a minor province in the make-up of a starship captain. WHAAAT??? This kind of thinking leads to situations like these: Riker does not declare a Red Alert in Best of Both Worlds until after the Borg cube came almost within attack range of his ship. Rascels. Looses command of the Enterprise-D to two surpluss Klingon Birds Of Prey. He lets them pummel his command for some time trying to hail them, then fires a single token phaser shot without follow up, THEN lets no more then a few dozen (if that) Ferangi board and secure 800 people, when he should have shotued 'GENERAL QUATERS' and everyone pull phasers from all the arms lockers that are in every room and repel the boarding. Star Trek Generations. A relatively new battleship losing a battle to a 30 year old Klingon scoutship. Insurection where he runs from the relatively powerless So'na. It's amazing he was offered a command of his own. All command officers in Star Trak relied primarily on luck. The only decent one with any sense of military tactics was Kirk. And even Kirk had some downfalls as well.