Starfleet Jedi

I just dled the first season of TNG(because Picard is a bad ass) and will finally have some idea of the capabilities of Star Trek ships versus Star Wars ships, maybe. Hopefully I will no longer be entirely one-sided in my knowledge from now on. I shall post any thing that I find interesting about the capabilities in this thread for comparison with Star Wars, or if I have any questions about possible technobabble that I may be unfamiliar with. I plan on watching the entire series within the next month or so.

Good for you.
I have a few seasons of TNG, DS9 and TAS (the animated series), and I'm hoping to get them all eventually.

Although I have to say that the first season of TNG is slow in the beginning, and more utopic then militaristic, it gets better with each season.

Congratulations on your first season. I own all of TNG, DS9, VOY and TOS on DVD. I never bothered to get either TAS or ENT, because I simply wasn't interested. Is TAS any good, Praeothmin?

Airlocke_Jedi_Knight wrote:I just dled the first season of TNG(because Picard is a bad ass) and will finally have some idea of the capabilities of Star Trek ships versus Star Wars ships, maybe. Hopefully I will no longer be entirely one-sided in my knowledge from now on. I shall post any thing that I find interesting about the capabilities in this thread for comparison with Star Wars, or if I have any questions about possible technobabble that I may be unfamiliar with. I plan on watching the entire series within the next month or so.

Is Picard such a bad ass? I would have thought the bad ass was Kirk. ;-)
But seriously, I would have gone with TOS first over TNG since that is where everything starts from, but I suppose TNG work just fine. Be prepared, however, since TNG's first and second seasons are kind of rocky in terms of quality story telling. If you need reference you can try the following sites:

Graham Kennedy's Daystrom Institute Technical Library, whichf does in many ways for Treknology what Curtis Saxton's Star Wars Technical Commentaries does for Star Wars.

Then there is Memory Alpha, a wiki site.

Finally there is Bernd Schneider's Ex Astris Scientia, which has additional articles and insights into Treknology.

But congratulations, you have taken your first step into a larger world.
-Mike

Cocytus wrote:Congratulations on your first season. I own all of TNG, DS9, VOY and TOS on DVD. I never bothered to get either TAS or ENT, because I simply wasn't interested. Is TAS any good, Praeothmin?

TAS is like any Trek series, it has it's good, bad, and ugly episodes. "Yesteryear" is definitely the best out of all of them as it gives a great early look at Vulcan, and Spock's early life and tribulations The elements of Spock's boyhood are the only offical story elements from TAS to be considered canon. The worst of the series is probably "Infinite Vulcan".
-Mike

Being a young individual, I have issues with poor effects and things of that nature, I grew up in the 90s, so I can deal TNG, but, TOS is just so old. I'm sure I will check it out eventually, at the very least for that 1930s time travel episode who's name seems to escape me.

I just like Patrick Stewart, feel bad for him though. He's such a great Shakespearian actor, yet he will forever be remembered for being Jean-Luke Picard. Not to bash Star Trek, but Skakespear is the greater art.

Man that post is grammatically shaky. There are some spelling errors too. Eh, who cares, I'm tired.

Airlocke_Jedi_Knight wrote:Being a young individual, I have issues with poor effects and things of that nature, I grew up in the 90s, so I can deal TNG, but, TOS is just so old. I'm sure I will check it out eventually, at the very least for that 1930s time travel episode who's name seems to escape me.

You can always download and watch the TOS Remastered episodes with the new and improved FX. ;-)
-Mike

Which will come out eventually on DVD, which is why I haven't bought the TOS series even though it is cheap.

Cocytus, Mike has pretty much explained it.
It has its good and its bad, just like any ST series.
Also, the animation is a little bit older, but it is still enjoyable.

Praeothmin wrote: Which will come out eventually on DVD, which is why I haven't bought the TOS series even though it is cheap.

I plan on waiting until TOS-R is released on Blueray, but I already have the collect volumes of the original version on DVD.

Praeothmin wrote: Cocytus, Mike has pretty much explained it.
It has its good and its bad, just like any ST series.
Also, the animation is a little bit older, but it is still enjoyable.

The TAS opening titles, when you realize the limitations of traditional animation and for TV at that time, are fairly impressive.
-Mike

For the purpose of the vs debates, TNG really gets started around season 3, I personally would also recommend Deep space 9 not only for its many battle sequences, but for trying to do something really different in Star Trek (a lot of trekkies out there seem to hate the show for that, go figure).
The animation for TAS is 1970's quality, but the stories were written by the original writers from TOS not to mention the original cast supplied their voices for their characters (only Chekov was missing).
I wouldn't worry about Enterprise however, I used to brag that I had seen every star trek episode ever made until certain circumstances caused me to miss much of Enterprises third season. I could catch it now but at this point I no longer remember where I left off at and really don’t think I missed anything at all. I caught the fourth and last season which was a brief glimmer of what Enterprise should have been all along.

Airlocke_Jedi_Knight wrote:Being a young individual, I have issues with poor effects and things of that nature, I grew up in the 90s, so I can deal TNG, but, TOS is just so old. I'm sure I will check it out eventually, at the very least for that 1930s time travel episode who's name seems to escape me.

The appeal of TOS definitely is not the effects but the stories and the camaraderie of Kirk, Bones and Spock. It has it's stinkers but IMO none that are worse than the first two seasons of TNG and its stinkers.

I certainly would not say that the worst of TNG's first season are any worse than the worst of TOS' first season, just look at "Miri" and "The Alternative Factor". But TNG was plagued by mediocre and a few more stinky episodes than TOS. The Writers' strike during TNG's second season certainly did not help anything, either.
-Mike

Mike DiCenso wrote:I certainly would not say that the worst of TNG's first season are any worse than the worst of TOS' first season, just look at "Miri" and "The Alternative Factor". But TNG was plagued by mediocre and a few more stinky episodes than TOS. The Writers' strike during TNG's second season certainly did not help anything, either.
-Mike

Err...oops. I meant to type "no worse than", damn that's frustrating.

It's okay. It happens. :-)
-Mike