Topic: Ten Forward - The Star Trek Topic

@FullbringIchigo I appreciate the thought but, despite not having watched Discovery's second season yet, I didn't care enough to avoid spoilers. I got the joke (and am so very glad people's theories about Control didn't come to pass... I'm okay with Discovery changing a period of canon I kinda don't care about, but I'm not sure I could've handled them having an impact on one I do).

@KALofKRYPTON @RogerRoger so i got round to playing the new Discovery chapters on STO (i used my Discovery character too, seemed like the right thing to do) and it was pretty good actually, some of the newer stories in STO have bben a bit lacking and lazy lately but they really put the effort into this one, in fact they have put a lot of effort into the Discovery content if i'm honest

plus just look at these character models

for the age of the engine they are using these look incredible AND on a plus note they changed the voice that congratulates you when you level up a Discovery character from Tilly to Lorca (don't get me wrong i like Tilly and all but her voice in the game is pretty grating, guess that's the problem of using an actress with no voice over experience)

all in all the Discovery story is probably the best way to start a new game on STO now along, it along with the reorganized story episodes flow a lot more smoothly that the older factions do

also here is the launch trailer

you know what i might even start a new Discovery character and live stream the entire story, could be fun

Michael Chabon Named Showrunner For 'Star Trek: Picard'

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon has been named Showrunner of the upcoming Star Trek: Picard series. Chabon is working closely on the day-to-day production of the series with Academy Award winner and veteran Star Trek writer and producer Akiva Goldsman, and Alex Kurtzman, who continues to oversee the expansion of the growing Star Trek universe for CBS Studios.

“Daring, lyrical, humane, whimsical, celebrated: words that describe both Jean-Luc Picard and the literary genius of Michael Chabon,” said Alex Kurtzman. “Despite a laundry list of accomplishments most writers only dream of, Michael shines with the heart and soul of a Trekkie who’s finally found his dream job. We’re so fortunate to have him at the helm as we explore this next chapter in the great captain’s life.”

“Star Trek has been an important part of my way of thinking about the world, the future, human nature, storytelling and myself since I was ten years old,” said Michael Chabon. “I come to work every day in a state of joy and awe at having been entrusted with the character and the world of Jean-Luc Picard, with this vibrant strand of the rich, intricate and complex tapestry that is ‘Trek.’”

Chabon is the bestselling author of the novels The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Wonder Boys, The Yiddish Policeman's Union, just to name a few. He's penned the short story collections A Model World and Werewolves in Their Youth, and several essay collections. Chabon’s screenplays and teleplays include John Carter, Spider-Man 2, and the Star Trek: Short Treks episodes “Calypso” and “Q&A.” In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, Chabon has won the Hugo, Nebula, Mythopoeic, Sidewise and Ignotus awards (Spain’s Hugo Award) and many others.

In addition to Chabon, Goldsman and Kurtzman, Patrick Stewart, Heather Kadin, James Duff, Rod Roddenberry and Trevor Roth also serve as executive producers with Aaron Baiers (Secret Hideout) serving as co-executive producer and Kirsten Beyer as supervising producer. The series is produced by CBS Television Studios in association with Secret Hideout and Roddenberry Entertainment. Star Trek: Picard will also, of course, feature Sir Patrick Stewart reprising his iconic role as Jean-Luc Picard, which he played for seven seasons on Star Trek: The Next Generation. The new series will follow this iconic character into the next chapter of his life.

Original Article Michael Chabon Named Showrunner For 'Star Trek: Picard

@FullbringIchigo That's a pretty decent trailer for the STO expansion. Also, I have every confidence in Jason Issacs as a voice actor; he was phenomenal as the Grand Inquisitor in Star Wars Rebels.

@FullbringIchigo
Kurtzman has so obviously been 'fired'!

@RogerRoger well he has plenty of experience, he has done quite a few Video Game roles in the past

@KALofKRYPTON i think the have "Roddenberryed him", took control away because he was messing it up and just left him in a figure head position, much like what happened to Gene Roddenberry during production of TNG although to be fair Gene's mess ups was because of his alcoholism and ill health where as Alex's are just plain incompetence

So the Upcoming Picard series is still pretty much a mystery but i saw an article from Screenrant and normally i wouldn't bother with them as they are a terrible site but for once they brought up a good point about something
Shinzon and as the article put it

Thanks to Shinzon, the Romulan Empire lost their leadership and was significantly weakened, which left the planet Romulus and its people especially vulnerable when a nearby star went supernova in 2387. According to Star Trek: Picard's teaser trailer, the captain led "the greatest rescue armada" in history to save the Romulan people but at a great cost and all of that began with Shinzon.

question is will Star Trek Picard tie into the events on Nemesis?, will Shinzon be mentioned? and did those events help lead to the destruction of Romulus?

is that why Picard left Starfleet because he felt it was his fault?

what do YOU think?

@FullbringIchigo
I kind of took all of that as read to be honest. A destabilised government (and certainly how things are depicted in some of the books) would be factor in the response to Romulus being in danger.

The show would be foolish to not to mention all of it since it really does seem to hinge on the reasons why Picard left Starfleet.

The bigger question is how far they may have been pushed from Kurtzman's own direction. I would assume that the story will remain close to what he wanted - which probably runs close to the comic stuff he was involved in.

@KALofKRYPTON well even if he is no longer show runner what he set in motion will be felt through the entire run of the show, just like all of Fullers stupid decisions on Discovery, the look of the Klingons, the look of the ships the focus on just one character instead of the ensemble cast was all Bryan Fuller but by the time CBS knew it wasn't going to work it was too late, the damage had been done

it's amazing how one person can cause so much damage, Discovery managed to fix a few things with season 2 but it still has a long way to go but now even that has ANOTHER new show runner who knows what season 3 will be

honestly if it was me i would have dropped Discovery, the ending of season 2 was fine as an actual ending and done a Pike series while retconing all the eff up's Fuller did

for example the Enterprise some how over the course of 10 years it has to go from this

to this

BUT i actually have a theory about that, now at the end of season 1 Cornwell said the Klingons were at Earths door step and we saw they were at the Sol System and Starfleets last Starbase had fallen so here is what i think, the fleet was basically gone at this point lets say down to a few dozen ships so in order to rebuild the fleet quickly and efficiently Starfleet adopted a simpler more efficient design in their ships, they got rid of things that were not needed, Holocomuncations and touchscreens for example and built ships with modular designs so ships could be cranked off the production line to save resources and for fast easy repair when needed basically they pretty much just scaled back on everything for a time so they could rebuild as fast as possible

they also promoted cadets to officer positions on Starships before going back to the Academy to take final exams this would explain why many officers in TOS were incompetent or how Kirk teached at the Academy for a time while still a Lieutenant

so basically my theory is that TOS looks less advanced because they were short on resources and had to rebuild the fleet as quickly and efficiently as possible

and yes that would mean the entire fleet was a kitbash

also did anyone else notice in Discovery Season 2 they shrunk the Enterprise in size from the original seen at the end of season 1

@FullbringIchigo

I've thought along the same lines regarding the state of Starfleet and rebuilding the fleet on diminished resources. It's the only this that makes thematic sense.

I don't think they actually changed the Enterprise size, but the shots from season 1 were from some pretty deliberate perspectives.

@KALofKRYPTON maybe but it looked a LOT bigger in the last episode of season 1 and the first episode of season 2

but then again Discovery has a LOT of problems with size of ships just look at the Klingon ships in one episode it's the size of a shuttle and the next it's as big as the Discovery

plus the Discovery is supposed to be over 600 meters long and yet it's shuttle bay takes up most of the secondary hull

proportions are way off on that series

@FullbringIchigo
It's in the production bible - '1 meter of overall length per shuttle/craft/pod/thing' 🤔😂

@KALofKRYPTON well that explains it because at the end of season 2 the Discovery had hundreds of shuttles

@FullbringIchigo
Is quite incredible, that that entire sequence manages to be the dumbest, most contrived, least considered part of the entire series. Which is saying something.

@KALofKRYPTON yeah it made no sense at all but i have to admit it looked pretty good but that's Discovery all over, all flash and no substance

you know what i'm doing something new Trek Info

Today's Info: Who was the man from the future?

in season 5 it was going to be revealed who he was but as we never got a season 5 so that might not be canon any more and as Brannon Braga is no longer involved in Trek

so here it is, the TRUE identity of the Man from the Future

*the show's fifth season would have revealed Future Guy to be Jonathan Archer "trying to correct history" and repair a corrupt future by influencing his younger self. Braga added that Archer being Future Guy was the plan from the beginning, and previous statements claiming Future Guy was intended to be a Romulan were meant as a red herring.

and to quote Braga from the season 1 blu-ray special features

"I thought the most interesting idea that we came up with [regarding the identity of Future Guy] was that it was going to be Archer himself. And an Archer from some sort of terrible future where he, in some way, was responsible for doing something wrong, but he's manipulating himself. And if you go back and look, it could very well have been Archer."

so at some point in the future Archer did something that went horribly wrong and caused such a catastrophe that he actually manipulated time in order to fix his mistake, whether or not he succeed is still in the air but i like to think he did

EDIT: and NO the catastrophe was NOT Discovery

@RogerRoger @KALofKRYPTON so either of you play the new STO Discovery chapters yet and what did you think?

also do you think how the characters were portrayed? did you agree with all the additions to the characters and do you buy that these events do enough explain why Landry was so cold and hard on Discovery

although it does nothing to explain her stupidity i mean seriously why did she open that cage when she knew full well Phasers didn't work on the Tardigrade

so apparently Star Trek Discovery Season 3 will introduce a "none-binary" main character, but little more information was provided so what do you think, will this character be a alien from a species that has no gender, a mono-gendered species or perhaps even a tri-gendered species (like the one in "The Outcast") or will it be something different?

personally i would love the new character to be an alien from a mono-gendered species because it's a interesting premise that was brought up in The Orville but it's hardly even a major point on that show bar a few episodes and even then it's mainly played for laughs (apart from one episode) and i would love to see it done seriously

sound quality isn't great but it's pretty nice to see some behind the scenes stuff

also Doctor Zimmerman someone at E! didn't know what they was doing

@FullbringIchigo Lots to reply to!

First up, I'd heard that Future Guy thing before, yeah. As much as I'm never one of "those" guys, I actually disagree with Brannon Braga on making him Archer, and I'm glad that never happened. James Horan played Future Guy and he's a fantastic actor; having him play an original villain would've been wonderful.

I actually once wrote a fan fiction on request, to wrap up the unresolved Temporal Cold War story arc from Enterprise however I wanted. I decided to use it as a trigger for the Romulan War, and made Future Guy a deranged Romulan called Devoras. He was experimenting with time travel from the distant future, putting human prisoners / slaves in test capsules equipped with interphasic cloaking devices (which explained the mysterious events of the second season's unresolved episode, "Future Tense") and manipulating the Suliban to allow them to pre-empt the Romulan War and help his people defeat 22nd Century Earth, preventing the rise of the Federation. He's working unofficially, however, and when the Romulans of his time try to stop him, he uses one of his experimental capsules to escape and somehow ends up appearing right in front of the Enterprise NX-01. Chaos ensues, Silik also came back from the dead and the end result is that Columbia NX-02 is destroyed by a temporal rift near a Romulan border outpost. The final scene was somebody on Romulus getting a vague report about "ships from Earth causing trouble near the border" and a strong hint that, with such information, the Senate would soon vote for war.

Anyway, it's fun to speculate, and I simply cannot dream up anything that would convincingly make Future Guy an older version of Archer. That's just so not Archer. Weird.

I haven't played Star Trek Online's new content, no... and alas, being honest, I doubt I ever will. The fact that I still haven't even bothered watching the second season of Star Trek: Discovery is speaking volumes to me about my current engagement with new Trek. A new, full-length trailer for Picard might tip me over the edge, but I think I'm saving all my energy and enthusiasm for that.

Non-binary gender issues can be pretty cool to explore. Something tells me it'll be a human character, alas, and that the current, real-world parallels / messages will be written with fists of ham, because apparently modern audiences aren't smart enough for allegories.

And finally, don't blame the E! channel for "Doctor Zimmerman" because that was actually gonna be the EMH's name! Most early press material calls him "Doc Zimmerman", including launch trailers for the pilot episode that made it onto VHS tapes. Originally, the plan was for him to search for a name throughout the first season (as he does) before finally settling on calling himself Zimmerman after his creator (although his forename hadn't been decided) towards the end, or at the beginning of Season Two. When audiences didn't mind him being a nameless character, and actually kinda liked it, the network relented on forcing the issue because the less humanised he was, the richer his episodes could be.

But for a good few months before, and even during, the launch of Voyager, he was officially called Doctor Zimmerman. I think Tuvok was also briefly called "Tuwok" (pronounced "Two-Wok") in some promotional material as well, but that might've been a typo!