Lothic

Carbon nanotubes may yet make this a reality. Sure it may be hundreds of years before it happens, but theoretically speaking it's at least within the realm of possibility. It's technically more "realistic" than warp drives and transporters at any rate.

Well to be fair this is yet another example of why I've always hated Voyager's ability to seemingly solve -any- problem/conflict with an ample dose of Deus ex machina styled "technobabble". Sure Trek has always used a bit of that throughout its history, but Voyager took it to such an extreme it almost became annoying.

There's a whole bunch of stuff I'd like to "retcon" out of Star Trek but as per usual wishing does not make it so.

You're just saying that because -you- happen to be human yourself...

Like I plainly implied Star Trek is obviously a show made by humans for the purpose of "exploring humanity" but some of the best ways to explore a subject from a literary point of view is to highlight and contrast differences between things to expose their true natures. Case in point some of the best Trek has always revolved around fundamental racial conflicts. Do I even have to mention Spock's constant struggles to balance his alien and human halves?

If you want a show that will "explore humanity" as you say what better way could there be than to introduce a non-human in a pivotal commanding role and see how all the other humans around that leader react to him/her.

Exactly.

Related to your "limited warp travel based on a lack of dilithium" idea I think there was already a TNG episode where they discovered that excessive warping through critical regions of space was somehow destabilizing it and causing problems for planets in those regions. The net effect was that the civilizations in the galaxy were going to have to figure out less destructive alternatives to warp drives within a matter of decades before they collectively screwed up the entire galaxy. Clearly this plotline was meant to be a cautionary "climate change in space" analogy.

This could lead to all sorts of dramas like various races either choosing to voluntarily cut back on warp travel or other races ignoring the warnings and causing all sorts of panic and/or fighting. Basically this could serve as a basis to "reboot" the future galaxy much the way you described.

You guys are acting like the Devs of this game will change the fundamental workings of an established Incarnate trial at the drop of a hat. You two should know better than most that there have been desperately needed changes to this game which have still literally taken YEARS to accomplish. Our Devs may be bright and competent people, but clearly doing everything they ought to do in a reasonably timely fashion often eludes them.

I'm not delusional enough to think that adding an extra Empyrean merit to this trial is going to instantly make it the most popular content in the game. But I'm also well aware that the Devs actually trying ANYTHING to encourage people to play it represents (perhaps sadly) what amounts to a significant effort on their part to address the situation.

The optimal solution to the negative reactions towards this trial may require some complex changes. Even if that eventually happens it's quite likely it won't happen anytime soon. The Devs have shown a reluctance over the years to fix "embarrassments" like this which technically work code-wise but are considered failures from a player enjoyment point of view.

I realize many people are frustrated with what they consider a "bad" trial and want it redesigned ASAP. But strangely enough I accept the reality that quick radical changes aren't going to happen in this case and remain uncharacteristically optimistic that simpler adjustments (like changing the number of Empyrean merits rewarded by the trial) may actually produce enough of a benefit to turn a bad situation into a nearly tolerable one.

This would make for an interesting series. It'd allow them to cover the various Star Trek story tangents which have been raised over the years but would not need a "regular crew" or a "standard ship" to handle. Sadly in this day and age of TV shows I really don't see how this idea would be accepted by the corporate suit-types. I think their mindset would be to have an established group of actors and sets that don't change from week-to-week to keep production costs lower. Maybe this could become some kind of cheaper web-based anthology series instead.

This is also a good idea. Star Trek has always promoted the idea that the Federation is totally pluralistic with hundreds of worlds all working together yet Starfleet has always been shown as being about 95% human. Now I realize for the purposes of making TV and movies that it's always been easier to have a bunch of plain old humans as extras walking around in the background. But it's high time for them to embrace more diverse aliens for the main cast of a given series including the "captain" of a series.

Like you say I guess such a captain would need to be a relatively human-looking one to better relate to the audience, but he/she could still be one that the rest of the crew might have "cultural challenges" dealing with. For example maybe in a post-Voyager setting some rationale could be cooked up to explain how a Romulan refuge joins Starfleet and becomes a starship captain. It'd be fun seeing how the rest of the crew handles someone in charge like that.

I guess it really sort of depends on direction the next series will take.

After reading the article I LOVE that they're willing to ignore the shenanigans J.J. Abrams created with his "new timeline" but at the same time I'm kind of leery of seeing anything set in the "post Voyager" timeframe. One of the many reasons I didn't like Voyager is that I think they let the technology get so advanced that it just seemed like all the needed to do every episode was construct the "anti-photonic neutrino beam reconstructor" device, turn it on and presto end of problem.

Like you I'm such a multi-decade slave to Trek at this point that I'll at least give any new series a try. But honestly I probably wouldn't mind seeing new episodes of TOS on TV at this point, even if had to be Abrams version of TOS.

I think I've seen most of this movie. It had a dash of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World but it was mostly like a sad, bus-based cousin of Airplane II. I actually think the Futurama episode that featured the "Land Titanic" was a slight homage to the silliness of The Big Bus.

Jovovich and Beckinsale are both proven action stars but neither one of them are overly abundant in the rack department. From what little I know about Danger Girl I think all of the main actresses would need to be fully equipped with standard superheroine-sized "floatation devices".

I'll be diplomatic enough to say I really like the idea -but- I also sadly think it'd be too much coding effort for the Devs to justify doing it.

I wasn't really trying to suggest that Mars Attacks! was as good or better than something like Ghostbusters or Bettlejuice. But I also don't consider it anywhere near bad enough to be a canidate for this "worst movie" thread either.

Mars Attacks! was clearly a Sci-Fi parody with its tongue firmly planted in its cheek. I don't even really consider it to be in the same class as something like Ghostbusters and wouldn't have really compared the two, but for the type of spoof movie it was I thought it was fairly entertaining. *shrugs*

And let me put it this way: If 2 Empyrean merits is still not enough to get people to run it more regularly then the Devs will know they have a REAL problem on their hands with this trial instead of just a slight one.

Simply put: At least the Devs are trying to do something about it. I say let it go for a month or two and we'll see if the Devs actually need to do anything -more- about it. I'd rather the Devs make adjustments based on evidence than "doubts".

*sigh*

Like we needed yet -more- proof of SyFy's general stupidity when it comes to TV shows...

Mars Attacks! did have a star-studded cast. But it also wasn't a "bad" movie at least as far as this thread is concerned. Mars Attacks! was never trying to be a critically serious sci-fi movie. In fact as a "sci-fi comedy" I thought it was actually one of the best of that particular sub-category.

Don't rush the Devs.
We've ONLY been asking for these things for 7.5 years now.
You've got to give them at least a -little- time to create these things.

One could even argue with 20/20 hindsight that the attempt at Alien 3 was semi-doomed to be considered a "failure" of sorts regardless of what they did because the first two were already so great that the odds that the third would be up to that same level of awesomeness were relatively low to begin with.

Can't say that I was "put off" by his performance. In fact I thought it was a pretty good way to show the audience how bad the situation had become.

Remember at first the Marines were all arrogant and cocky about the mission thinking it'd be super-easy. But then once they were in the middle of it they realized they were in big trouble and they started to panic. Paxton's reactions allowed the audience to get a sense that the s*** had hit the fan and that they were in serious danger.

All that and besides when you think about it those quotes were among the coolest ones of the movie. I couldn't imagine the movie -without- those quotes.

I agree that things like this are usually driven by military applications before purely civilian ones. But considering how many overly hyper people we have today who are willing to toss $600+ on iPads I figure that even in as little as 5 years there'll be at least some who'll be so excited by this tech that they'll throw out thousands of dollars to get even initial/limited retail versions.

Yeah I'd previously read this idea where SyFy took another show concept that supposedly had nothing to do with Nu-BSG and shoehorned it into being a prequel for the series. But doing that by itself shouldn't have been such a bad thing if they had focused it more directly towards telling a specific BSG prequel oriented story.

There was in fact material out there that would have appealed to people who had previously watched Nu-BSG. That story was "How did the Cylons get started in the first place". That was a part of the BSG historical timeline that had a legitimate justification to be covered regardless if they used "another" show's foundation to tell it or not.

But even with that I think the main reason why Caprica failed was that instead of just laser-focusing in on the single Cylon Origin story they decided to spend too much effort developing the metaphysical sideplots and taking too much time to tell the "main" story they should have paid attention to. The show lost its way within just the first few episodes and it quickly became apparent that all they wanted to do was churn out as many episodes as possible regardless if they advanced the story or not.

Bottomline instead of getting a tight 6 or 8 episode miniseries we got 17 semi-sloppy episodes where only maybe half of them were worthwhile. Hopefully the next BSG spin-off series won't suffer the same fate.

Thus the retroactive rationale for upping the reward for Keyes with an extra Empyrean. One could probably argue that the Devs should have made it worth 2 Empyreans from the start because of its length. That "shortsightedness" was part of the cheesiness I was talking about.

Who's to say other than we know that if -nobody's- running them then there'll be -no- chance for future badges. *shrugs*

Caprica's biggest mistake was that they tried to make an ongoing episodic TV series out of an idea that would have been better served as a 6 or 8 episode miniseries. Actually one could argue that nu-BSG itself should have been envisioned as a fixed length mini-series. As a pre-planned mini-series these shows could have well defined beginnings, middles and endings that tell good stories we can care about.

Of course as we all know American TV doesn't typically operate with that mindset. They'd rather try to create open-ended shows that'll last as long as the ratings are good. The only problem with that model is that it almost always means a show will linger well past its prime and be driven into the ground with silly plotlines that wander off into the weeds.

All we can do is hope that these shows manage to get decent worthwhile endings as best they can.

Well I'll at least agree with the idea that a movie with a "great" cast will never alone guarantee a great movie even though, as you say, Hollywood relies on "big names" to sway people to go see them. I just don't think we need to dwell too much on hypothetical "what-ifs" with specific movies like Star Wars when there are plenty of other real life examples of bad movies with big name casts we could point out. I guess I just wonder why we'd construct a bad example for argument's sake when there are plenty of pre-made bad examples to poke fun at already?