LogFAQs > #944661188

Ah hell, I'll do another round before watching the SNL thing.

Helena Cain
A great way to shake things up in BSG and pay tribute to the original series. I've watched both BSGs, and like most things, the remake does it better. She plays a good role as Adama's foil: both captain warships that survive the Cylon attack and find a fleet of civilian ships, but where Adama decides the war is lost and tries to rescue people, Cain sacrifices all of the people she could have saved in order to keep fighting. She's unreasonable without being crazy, and it's completely understandable why Adama would almost assassinate her before deciding against it. It also gives us one of the best scenes in the show, where Adama just directly and casually tells Starbuck to kill her when he gives the code word, and then when he decides not to, she's incredibly relieved.

Oh, and the actress played Ensign Ro, I guess.

Uhura
Look, I know Uhura is important as a cultural icon, as one of the first black women on American TV who wasn't a maid or something, but as an actual character, she's a complete non-entity. Even Nurse Chapel at least pined over Spock. What does Uhura have? She has the fact that she occasionally sings and that her ideal man is a buff dude speaking Swahili. This is one thing I can't really fault the Abramsverse for. Changing Uhura to be a completely different person was basically necessary.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
I admit that from an objective standpoint, this is the worst Star Trek movie. But it has weird ideas, it has the heroes approaching problems without violence, it has a three-breasted cat hooker defeated by throwing her into water, it has a gag about a planet of peace being forgotten about and all of the worst diplomats being sent there to get rid of them, it has a god alien shooting lightning bolts out of its eyes, and it has a 60 year-old woman doing a striptease. It's terrible, but it has some amount of soul, you know? I don't hate it. I don't hate it.

USS Defiant
Perfectly designed. It is completely believable that this is the Federation's version of a warship, right down to classifying it as not technically a warship. They also really got all the mileage possible out of the cloaking device. Its introduction marks when the show stops being about the space station and starts being more about the upcoming war. One of my favorite DS9 things is how when the ship is introduced, they make a big deal out of having to have a Romulan attache, and then she never shows up again.

Katherine Janeway
The problem with Janeway is twofold. First, she's very clearly 'the female captain.' Sisko was never 'the black captain,' but Janeway is absolutely 'the female captain.' They wanted Janeway to be strong and empowered and also to not have to worry about romance, so they establish that she's engaged to some boring guy in episode 1 who will not be in the rest of the series so that she'll have a reason to never look at another man. One of the best VOY moments is after she learns he left her for another woman (in his defense, he thought she was dead), she starts a holodeck program and falls in love with the lead hologram, but he already has a wife, so the camera pans in on her face and she deadpan says "Computer... Delete the wife." That's ****ing hilarious.

Second, Janeway is also supposed to be a scientist. Kirk is an adventurer, Picard is a diplomat, Sisko is a warrior, and Janeway is supposedly a scientist. The problem is that the writers have no idea how to write a scientist. The way to write a scientist is to have them puzzle through possibilities until they arrive at an explanation for whatever wacky space shenanigans are happening. It's basically the same as writing a detective, which is why Spock fits so easily into the role of a murder detective in TUC.

Third, and I lied there are three things wrong with her, her ethics are extremely inconsistent. Kate Mulgrew eventually admitted that she played Janeway as schizophrenic because there was no other way to explain her actions.

Caitians
A perfectly serviceable race of cat aliens. There's nothing to really say about them because no one has ever expanded upon them in any way. They don't even behave particularly cattish. What's with cat people, anyway? Someone get Japan in here to explain.

I was going to say that they have an inconsistent appearance and post all of the Caitians who have shown up in Star Trek, only to look at them and realize that if you assume they have as much diversity as, say, breeds of house cats or types of big cats, then they're actually pretty consistent. I was shocked. Score for Lower Decks, I suppose.
https://i.imgur.com/pvVosY5.png

Elnor
"Okay, Mr. Kurtzman, so far our main characters are Picard, a magical teenage girl genius who's the key to saving or destroying the universe whom he must adopt, a woman who's poor and lives in a trailer on Earth, a planet where poverty doesn't exist, a roboticist woman who's too stupid to be a roboticist, and a Latino guy, whose character is that he speaks Spanish sometimes. We have room in the budget for one more character."

"NINJA"

"But sir--"

"NINJA WHO SAYS BADASS LINES BEFORE HE KILLS YOU"

Honestly, did Kurtzman think "Please, friend, choose to live" is a badass threat to make before fighting you? I also oppose the Romulans laughing at him and calling him "Ladyman" for being raised by nuns, they have never displayed sexism in the past.

But honestly, if we're being real here? Elnor is probably the most pleasant person in the show. He's the only character who doesn't have a dark and tragic backstory, and he's the only one who approaches things with an optimistic attitude. I still don't think he's a proper Star Trek character, but he's better than the others.

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Not changing this sig until I decide to change this sig.
Started: July 6, 2005