melannen | Star Trek.

Star Trek.

Star Trek meme, by way of

espresso_addict. Because however hard you try, you can never escape from your roots.

FAVOURITE THINGS:

Star Trek Series: TOS. Utterly. Although I loved the logs so dearly that if I ever saw TAS I have a feeling it would be close. :)

Star Trek Movie: The Voyage Home. Because it was sheer fun all the way through and I never had to cringe away from the screen once.

Star Trek Character: Am I allowed to say K's't'lk? Or Ael t'Rllaillieu? Or Lt. Francis Drake Reed? Oh. Then, um, Dr. McCoy. I was also reather dearly fond of Kes, also Guinan, but McCoy probably still wins.

Star Trek Pairing: I suppose, then, that Ael/J'm doesn't count either. Or Romulan Commander/James? Or Piper/Sarda? Or Drake/George... I think it's becoming clear where I spent most of my time in this universe. ;) I am actually *terribly* fond of Kes/Neelix. Kirk/Mitchell I am fond of too, however.

Alien Race: Rihannsu, when done will. Er. For one based on show canon, I'd have to go with Horta. They're like earthbound FSMs! And so sweet.

Alien World: Vulcan, I have to say, was pretty grand. And one of the only alien worlds that actually stands out in my mind at all.

Federation Class Starship: Constitution-class. Is there ever any competition? All the others look squat and dumpy next to her.

TOS Episode: Oh, man. City on the Edge of Forever. The Trouble with Tribbles. Journey to Babel. Where no man... The one with the gunfight at the OK Corral. Devil in the Dark. The one with the gangsters! I can't pick just one! There was a time, too, when I could have listed them all in order, with summaries.

TNG Episode: These are about equally mixed between loathe it, desperately mixed feelings, and like it. However, I have to say that my three favorite are the ones with McCoy, Spock, and Scotty in, respectively. ;) I still tend to say "It's ...green?" upon meeting any unnamed beverage. This was the first grown-up show I ever really ever watched while it was in new episodes, and those were the ones I actually looked forward to and wasn't disappointed in.

DS9 Episode: Mmm. Okay, I only saw this up through, oh, about when the war really started to heat up (because I still firmly believe that the Star Trek universe should *never* have a real, full, hot war on. It is better than that.) I did quite like the pilot, and, the tribble episode, and okay, I'm getting on to where I can't remember whether it's a book or an episode that I like. Anything with the Ferengi in was usually fairly entertaining...

VOY Episode: Okay, I never forgave this show for getting rid of Kes like that (in my mind, she and Wes are off having all kinds of adventures in the glowy beyond), and I stopped watching around the time the Sexy Chick in Skintight Jumpsuit showed up, and my memories are vague, and I am *cursed* that every. single. time. I turn on a rerun, it turns out to be the lizard-babies one. There were some fairly good eps while I was watching, they just all sort of blur together now.

ENT Episode: I swore I would only watch these if they had Lt. Reed in. And of course, just to spite me, they did put a Lt. Reed in, but he wasn't the *real* Lt. Reed, which just about sums up my feelings for the show, of which I have still not watched any.

Star Trek Quote: S'task's farewell stave : "Enthrone your pasts/ This done, fire and old blood / will find you again. / Better hearts' breaking / than worlds'." (Did I mention my joy in the great doomed platonic love of Surak and S'task? First poem I even intentionally memorized.)
Oh. You want something from the *show*. I was never much about memorizing quotes from the show, really, and most of their attempts to be profound come off as stilted. There are plenty of funny bits I like, though, particularly whatever happens when the TOS OT3 are on the bridge together.

LEAST FAVORITE THINGS:

Star Trek Series: I hate NG for having so much really awful stuff mixed with such great potential. I hate DS9 for turning the Star Trek universe into something it shouldn't ever have been; a universe with Federation starships that are designed only for war. I hate Voyager for sucking *so very much* and turning into Soap Opera In Space even worse than TNG did despite the great premise they started with. I haven't seen any Enterprise, so I won't judge. And I hate TOS for getting me into this mess in the first place. :P

Star Trek Movie: There were many things in V that were awful. But Generations hit my embarrassment squick so hard (both for the characters and the producers) that I never did make it all the way through. And then First Contact was just so wrong (in terms of continuity) that I haven't watched anything after that.

Star Trek Character: I don't. Dislike anyone. Um, Barclay?

Star Trek Paring: Every single canon ship in Voyager. Except Kes/Neelix.

Alien Race: Difficult to say. Most of the races that got more than one episode had both good and bad versions.

Alien World: Basically any "scrubby dry planet that we didn't have the props budget to buy vegetation for". They're about a dime a dozen, though. (See, I can buy every planet being seeded with trees from the Vancouver area. Every planet happening to look like the same soundstage, though, not so much.)

Federation Class Starship: the Defiant. Of course.

TOS Episode: There are some really bad ones. Like "The Omega Glory". And then "Amok Time", which is greatly beloved by the fandom, hit my embarassment squick again. And also had some making-no-sense problems. But I can't hate it, for it has led to so much yay.

TNG Episode: I'll have to go with the one where the doctor falls in love with the ghost. But there were many.

DS9 Episode: I don't know, actually. I have a feeling I stopped watching in time to miss most of the ones I would've hated, and blocked out the rest.

VOY Episode: The one with the lizard babies was hilariously bad. The one where Q wanted Janeway's baby, however, was just cringe-worthy. However, the whole storyline where the Kazon woman told Chakotay she was having his baby is still my benchmark for bad, bad stories.

ENT Episode: Haven't seen any! Yay!

Star Trek Quote: ... I don't bother remembering most of the Trek details I despise.

CHOICES:

Trekkie or Trekker? Trek fan.

Kirk or Picard? Depends on what I want to use him for.

Defiant or Delta Flyer? The U.S.S Banana Republic. (What?)

Tribbles or Targs? Tribbles. I don't even know what Targs are...

Coffee, Black or Tea, Earl Grey? Tea.

Porthos or Spot? Spot! Who was Porthos? Although I-Chaya is better than them all.

EMH or Data? EMH. Too bad he didn't get to do anything good. He would've been greatly improved by a metal H stuck on his forehead, though.

Pah-wraiths or Prophets? don't know Pah-Wraiths. I rather like the Prophets, though, at least, as far as I followed the show.

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Porthos was Archer's dog from Enterprise. He was a little beagle. Personally I loved Dr. Phlox from Enterprise. He was very wise.

I'll do this meme later. :)

Ah! I keep thinking I should watch some Enterprise, because the fic makes the characters sound very interesting (Though not as interesting as the *real* first crew of the Enterprise, the one from the books with the other Lt. Reed), but even the fic-writers often seem to have trouble recommending the actual show.

I suspect we have opposite tastes in Trek -- I didn't watch that much of Voyager but Kes struck me as one of the most Sueish characters on television.

I still firmly believe that the Star Trek universe should *never* have a real, full, hot war on. It is better than that.

Care to expand? I found the war arc both realistic & fascinating, though I did mourn the threads that got neglected to forefront it.

Well, if you haven't seen much of TOS, it might be hard to understand. I think the real fundamental difference is between people who started with TOS and people who came in later. But.

TOS came out of the '60s, and keeping the peace - or rather, keeping the balance of power so that the three-way cold war stayed cold - was the *most* important thing in that show. Yes, sometimes it came very close, and there were plenty of skirmishes, but in the end you knew that there *would* be a way to prevent all-out war, and that the human race would be able to find that way, and they would choose to use it. That fundamental faith - that idealism, that no matter happened, peace *was* possible, and humanity would find it, and keep it, and still be humanity - that there were other ways than violence, and that we would find ways other than violence - that was *important*.

The Enterprise was the flagship of the fleet, and it was a science and exploration vessel. Sure, it had weapons, and sometimes it had to use them, but its primary mission was discovery, and learning, and making friends. Making friends at *all costs.* And when they did turn to violence first, it always turned out to be the wrong choice, and they found a way to solve the problem some other way. And there *always was* an option other than war.

That was Kirk, Spock and McCoy - the Vulcans had found peace by submerging passion. The Humans had kept their passion, but was something that had to fight for. But *together* - together, on the Enterprise, we could have peace and passion both, a better humanity, a better way. We could, and would, outgrow war.

All-out war was the very worst thing that could happen in that universe. Thematically. And symbolically. And *really*; war meant .. meant the end of everything, everything that the Federation was supposed to be about, because it was diversity - 200 kinds of people, and more, and it was their devotion to peace that kept them together, and if the Humans tried to start a war, half of them would bail in disgust, because that wasn't what the Federation was about. Because everyone could agree on the necessity of peace and the joy of friendship, but war - war was not a universal.

...and beyond that, a Federation at wat turned everything that Kirk and Company had done into a failure. And a delusion.

I'm not saying it was realistic, or even the best sort of storytelling, but that wasn't what I came to Star Trek for. I came to Star Trek to be reassured that every day, in every way, things were getting better and better. And maybe we had a way to go - maybe even 400 years in the future we had a way to go - but we'd get there.

The later series, after NG ended, lost that faith. Lost that fundamental optimism that made Star Trek so special. They weren't *bad*, for TV sci-fi, they just utterly betrayed what I cared about in ST.

(And yeah, maybe Kes was a little Mary-Sueish. Even before she turned into a glowy energy being, which I prefer to forget. But ST characters are *supposed* to be shining and heroic, and she was the only person on Voyager at the beginning who even got close to the .. strength of character, maturity, firmness of purpose .. of my beloved TOS characters. Not counting the Doctor, who was awesome and would have got on very well with McCoy.)

...possibly I still care about this stuff more than I thought I did.

[Eh, just wrote a longer response which LJ ate. Sigh.]

Thanks for the long and thoughtful response. I've heard a lot of Trek fans dismiss DS9 without any explanation as 'just not Trek' so it's really interesting to understand that viewpoint better.

I'm fundamentally a pessimist about human nature. War has been a constant in the past, and I fear it will remain so in the future. I find portrayals of utopian near futures hard to believe. I came into television sf via Blake's 7, after which even the war arc in DS9 appears fundamentally optimistic, especially as humans are not the aggressors.

Not counting the Doctor, who was awesome and would have got on very well with McCoy.

Oh, I did love the Doctor!

I actually quite liked DS9 when it started! There was a time, years and years ago, when I might have been talked into saying it was my favorite. We got to see a part of life in the Federation that we had never really seen before, about what Peace at All Cost really meant, and all these characters who had lost *so much* in winning that peace finding their place in it. But then it went all epic and interstellar and I stopped liking the answers they were finding.

From what I remember (And I haven't really delved into DS9 stuff for, what, six or seven years? At least.) there was still some of that spirit of optimism - it certainly wasn't grindingly doomful - but *my* Star Trek characters would never have let that war get started.

I dunno. I tend to like the happier versions of the future, even if I don't always believe in them. But that sometimes-naive, sometimes wise utopianism was really what made Star Trek distinctive. If I wanted a galaxy at war, or a depressing future, there was B7, and B5, and BSG, (and even some things that didn't start with B). For keeping the peace, though, and the knowledge that we *would* do well, because we're *us* - there was Star Trek, and there was Dr. Who.

(And yet I managed adore Nine despite the Time War. Maybe because letting the war happen really *was* portrayed as utter disaster and betrayal of all that Dr. Who was about, and he had to wipe things clean, unmake, undo, because it was so terrible and wrong...)

Oo! I might do this later. It is SAD, SAD, SAD how little I remember, though. I'll have to delete all your answers first to make sure I don't just go "oh, that sounds good!" and leave them in. d-:

Targs, I *think*, are dog-like things. But I'm not sure whether they're pets/food on Qo'nos or run wild on Vulcan. *ponder*

Targs makes me think of vornskrs, but I'm not entirely sure if the memory is from Trek or i'm mixing them up with something from Barsoom or something.

I went back several iterations from my flist to steal a version with answers I didn't care about, and even then there were things I had trouble coming up with an answer for. (Who were the godlike aliens who turned all the weapons red-hot and forced a Klingon-Federation truce?

Organians?

Yes! Thank you! I kept getting stuck on Orions.

If it makes you feel better, I now have the unexplained mental image of an onion lightbulb.

They do sound kind of vornskr-ish, don't they? Is it cheating to look them up? It's the Klingon one. (http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Targ) Who in their right mind would prefer that to a cwute widdle twibble? (A Klingon, I guess.)

Um. The Organians? Those are the only truce-makers I can think of, but besides being all ascended and stuff, I can't remember how they did it.

(Right, of course. I was thinking of sehlats (http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Sehlat).)

Sehlats, like I-Chaya! Or even fvai.

I assume they named the Targs *before* all that interesting linguistics work on the Klingon language? Because, um.

Ael!

Ael!

I still haven't got my hands on the newest Rihannsu book. But I am sure it too will be of joy!

My brother gave me that and the omnibus of the first four for Christmas. It was delicious.

Just chiming in with "Barclay is freakin' awesome!" I'm way too tired to meme up just yet, though.

But yeah. Barclay. Awesome.

Do you happen to know whatever happened to neosmera? I haven't been able to contact her in quite some time, and I'm getting worried. I noticed that you were on her list of friends and have been updating regularly...

Just to know she's still alive would be good. Thanks.

I last heard from her just before Christmas, and everything was going well. I haven't been in touch since, but I haven't heard anything worrying from mutual RL friends, if that helps.

You have no idea who I am, but I found you by googling for the real Lt. Reed from Best Destiny and Final Frontier. I just wanted to comment on omg George/Drake and how this meme makes me love you. Even though I'm replying to an old post.

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Star Trek.

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