Wednesday, June 10, 2009

A reader needs advice on Star Trek and the Borg

I think this is going to end up being much too long to put in a comment.



Okay, this is the discussion so far:



bulletholes said...
i HAEN'T BEEN TO SEE THE NEW MOVIE YET, BUT i'VE BEEN GEARING UP FOR IT.i WATCHED "fINAL fRONTIER (OPPS)because I like that one, then got "Generations".Generations was cute, but on the whole disappointing to a non-Trekkie.From what I understand, I can watch this new one without needing to see the others.For a non-Trekkie who never saw anything after "5", (except the recent view of Generations) which of these newer films, in 20 words or less, would you recommend?
5/29/2009 11:16 AM
laughingattheslut said...
Now that is a tough one, especially since I am a Trekkie, and it is hard to think from the point of view of someone who is not.Generally speaking, I think that most people like the newest movie (the current movie is number 11), though some of us Trekkies from way back cannot get past some of the mistakes.Of the movies 6-10, my favorite is number 8, First Contact. It has both the borg and the man who first invented warp drive (though this version of the character is very different from the one seen in the original series back in the sixties). Without getting too much into what the borg are, just know that they are the type of alien that you have to stay away from or you will become one of them (like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Puppet Masters, Invaders from Mars, or The Thing, etc...)I would think that the favorite Star Trek movie for basic non-trekkies would be number 4, where they go back to our time to get a couple of humpback whales. It is very funny and you don't have to know anything about the Federation or Klingons or any of that to get what is going on. But you said that you already saw that one.Funny that you like number 5. Most people hate it.Number 6 has been compared to us trying to be friends with the Soviet Union after something really bad happens to them, like Chernobyl.Number 7 you saw. I think that they were trying to make both the original series fans happy and at the same time make the Next Generation fans happy, and just ended up not making anyone happy. Fans of the original series just got up and left in the middle of the movie.Number 9 was okay. Some people accidently found the fountain of youth, and some other people try to take it away from them to cure their own illnesses. But it is their own fault that they got the illnesses in the first place, so you can't really feel too sorry for them. Captain Picard and crew to the rescue.Number 10 doesn't seem to be anybody's favorite either. It had Romulans, and scary sort of almost vampire-like relatives of Romulans, and a dopey younger brother of Data. But somehow, it just wasn't what anybody hoped for.For most trekkies, the second movie is still the best, even if Spock dies in it.So if you are going to the theater this weekend you should be able to watch number 11 without much trouble, and if you want to stay home and rent a Star Trek video that you haven't seen before I would go with number 8, though certainly number 4 is also worth seeing a second time.
5/29/2009 4:02 PM
bulletholes said...
Yeah, they had "first contact", but the cover of Generations said it had Kirk in it so I thought maybe it was #6 in the series. I don't think it was so bad as to walk out on, and when Picard found Kirk in that house in the Nexus it gave me a good feel. Then they blew it.I like #5 maybe just for one reason especially...my son and I watched it when he was about five and when Kirk asks the big God dude why he needs a Starship...well...my son mimics that scene all the time.He will raise his finger up and say "I have a question"...he still does that to this day.
5/29/2009 5:25 PM



bulletholes said...
hi laffin1 I went and got First Contact at your suggestion. it got a little tedious in the middle, but any movie that quotes moby Dick and then plays some Steppenwolf all inside of 5 minutes has got to be OK. I can't wait to watch it again, so my question is...what should i watch for, and do the borgs appear in a previous episode.I'd never herard of a borg before. That one, she was kinda hot.
6/09/2009 12:47 PM


Well, that's a lot of stuff to talk about.

Okay, I think most of us are agreed that the borg queen is kinda hot. Alice Krige played her in First Contact. Later, the same character shows up in Voyager, but that actress wasn't available, so another actress got the part for a while. And then for the show's final episode I think that they got Krige to do it again.

Voyager also had a female borg crew member. Most of us are generally agreed that she was also hot.

Some of us Trekkies, including some of us female Trekkies, have been known to dress up as Borg. Some of us are hot, some of us, not so much. Some of us get mixed reviews. I had a Borg parody costume myself, but my last time to wear it was about twenty-five pounds ago.

Okay, that was the only Borg appearance in the movies. Before that they were in several episodes of The Next Generation. I think that the second or third was Best of Both Worlds, which was the end of the season cliffhanger one year, and it is usually voted favorite episode. At least, part one is great. Part two was good, but a bit of a disappointment after all of us spent the summer trying to figure out what would happen.

There were more Borg episodes after that. Some of them involved Data's evil twin brother Lore.

There most have been Borg episodes on Deep Space Nine, but I can't remember any of them at the moment.

Then came Voyager, and after spending all that money on new Borg stuff for the eighth movie, they seemed to run into the Borg all the time so that they could use the expensive costumes and props.

There was even an episode of Enterprise where they find a couple of frozen Borg on the north pole or something.

Anyway, there are a lot of Borg out there in the Star Trek universe.

As for what are the best parts of First Contact and what you should watch for if you see it again, I'm not sure. It was all good. I personally don't care too much about the holodeck scene, but the producers of Star Trek do love their holodecks and use them often.

I think that my favorite lines belonged to Lily. "Sorry, it's my first ray-gun." and "Borg? Sounds Swedish."

Also, as a non-Trekkie you might not know that the Emergency Medical Hologram (Robert Picardo) is the chief medical officer on Voyager. In fact, after the first episode, he is Voyager's only medical officer. This computer program that is only supposed to help the real doctor in an emergency ends up being online all the time in that series. So that part was really funny to fans of Voyager, even though there's really nothing that funny about the scene itself.

Not sure what else to suggest at this point. Maybe other readers have some thoughts on the subject.

3 comments:

dmarks said...

I remember the buzz immediately leading up to "Star Trek: The Next Generation", where the Ferengi were supposed to be the major cool enemy alien race in the new series. Then I remember the disappointment when they showed up, and they were so annoying that people impatiently waited for them to leave the screen. Oh well. I always thought that the Borg were a second attempt to come up with a major cool alien adversary for ST:TNG. And this time, it worked.

Voyager's problem was that they over-used the Borg. Not only that, they made the Borg green. I finally saw the first ST:TNG episode with the Borg in it (yes, I somehow missed it the first time out) after seeing the Voyager episodes, and my first thought was, how the Borg ship areas looked normal (compared to the smoky Matrixy places they showed later) and the Borg weren't green.

Always fun to read "Star Trek" summaries. Yes, I think the two "Best of Both Worlds" episodes are where "Star Trek: The Next Generation" peaked.

There are also Borg kids. I keep putting off doing a post about the Borg kids in "Star Trek: Voyager". I have a few photos that I took somewhere that I just have to dig out.

It has been so long since I have seen any of the Borg episodes of anything. But one I remember enjoying at the time was the one with a Borg named Hugh in it.

Ananda girl said...

Yikes. I know too little to comment. However, I did show up and read. ;-)

bulletholes said...

OK so after second viewing I can say:
I like the first Halo Deck scene with the medical officer, but when Picard uses it as an escape fro the borg, its a little too overblown and disjointed.

Yeah, lily is great. Wide eyed great!
Ephram is good to and overall the story is good, but the writers tend to want to do too much with it, and it gets bogged down in technical stuff.

And the end is very nicely done. I did not know it as the vulcans we made first contact with, but that is, as they say, quite logical.

It was good enough that i'll watch it a number of times, so that I can fully grok.

Thanks laffin, for the dialog here.