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Stofsk wrote:I bet some eu author wrote how Kirk and Spock were acting for section 31 (either knowingly or not) when they did their little heist of a Romulan cloaking device in 'The Enterprise Incident'

I'm almost postitive that Section 31 has been retconned into that role in the EU.

Stofsk wrote:I bet some eu author wrote how Kirk and Spock were acting for section 31 (either knowingly or not) when they did their little heist of a Romulan cloaking device in 'The Enterprise Incident'

See the novel Cloak.

Actually, let me expand on that.

Basically, we learn that 31 got their hands on the cloak after Kirk delivered it to Starfleet -- or more specifically, to then-Rear Admiral Cartwright. It's implied Cartwright's a member of the organization, which means that 31 had a hand in the Khitomer Conspiracy. Kirk didn't know who was really backing the mission until later.

The novel's actually not bad. S.D. Perry's one of the better trek writer. She also goes for a two-for-one and deals with the backstory of VGR's "The Omega Directive". We learn how the theft of the cloaking device sets off a chain of events that culminates in the Federation's Omega molecule experiments -- and the disasterous consequences.

Ugh, Cartwright? They had to recycle Cartwright for that story? They had to tie the Khitomer Conspiracy to Section 31? And The Enterprise Incident somehow leads to The Omega Directive? That's terrible. I mean, that's really godawful. There's no reason all of those things have to tie together. Next they'll be writing Captain Tracy as a Section 31 operative. Maybe M-5 malfunctioned because Section 31 sabotaged it. And the Tantalus Penal Colony's neural neutralizer must have been a secret Section 31 project!

Right.


Section 31 doesn't really work as a "see, the Federation's not really so high-minded after all!" device, because it's a renegade agency. It has no official sanction, no official resources, and worst of all no oversight. It doesn't reflect Federation policy or even necessarily the intents or wishes of the civilian leadership or general public, it's just a bunch of unaccountable assholes with an implausible amount of resources. Shit, even the CIA has a leash, and as much as the Federation doesn't need to be a utopia, I'd still like it to at least be better than just Space America.

Uraniun235 wrote:Ugh, Cartwright? They had to recycle Cartwright for that story? They had to tie the Khitomer Conspiracy to Section 31? And The Enterprise Incident somehow leads to The Omega Directive? That's terrible. I mean, that's really godawful. There's no reason all of those things have to tie together. Next they'll be writing Captain Tracy as a Section 31 operative. Maybe M-5 malfunctioned because Section 31 sabotaged it. And the Tantalus Penal Colony's neural neutralizer must have been a secret Section 31 project!

Eh, I'll put it this way; it's not as bad as the VGR entry in the Section 31 novel series.

JME2 wrote:

Stofsk wrote:I bet some eu author wrote how Kirk and Spock were acting for section 31 (either knowingly or not) when they did their little heist of a Romulan cloaking device in 'The Enterprise Incident'

See the novel Cloak.

Uraniun235 wrote:Ugh, Cartwright? They had to recycle Cartwright for that story? They had to tie the Khitomer Conspiracy to Section 31? And The Enterprise Incident somehow leads to The Omega Directive? That's terrible. I mean, that's really godawful. There's no reason all of those things have to tie together. Next they'll be writing Captain Tracy as a Section 31 operative. Maybe M-5 malfunctioned because Section 31 sabotaged it. And the Tantalus Penal Colony's neural neutralizer must have been a secret Section 31 project!

Section 31 doesn't really work as a "see, the Federation's not really so high-minded after all!" device, because it's a renegade agency. It has no official sanction, no official resources, and worst of all no oversight. It doesn't reflect Federation policy or even necessarily the intents or wishes of the civilian leadership or general public, it's just a bunch of unaccountable assholes with an implausible amount of resources. Shit, even the CIA has a leash, and as much as the Federation doesn't need to be a utopia, I'd still like it to at least be better than just Space America.

Okay, from TNG:

1) The Best of Both Worlds - Duh.

2) Tapestry - IMHO this episode was the best use of Q ever.

3) Yesterday's Enterprise

4) All Good Things

5) Measure of a Man - This episode, along with TOS' "Devil in the Dark" sum up Star Trek for me.

6) Brothers - I still can't believe Rick Berman wrote this.

7) The Inner Light

8 ) Cause and Effect - Knock Braga all you want. This is probably his best episode.

9) The Drumhead

10) Who Watches the Watchers - Maybe the best "Prime Directive" episode TNG did.

DS9 I find harder. I haven't seen many of the episodes since they first ran, and frankly its not as fondly remembered in my book. When DS9 worked, it REALLY worked. "In the Pale Moonlight", "By Inferno's Light", "Duet", "Walz" are some examples of this. But the contrived nature of the Dominion War, and an eventual overemphasis on the Bajoran Prophets started to undermine the more serious episodes.

Honestly, in spite of the "grimdark" nature of DS9 I also found myself liking some of the more comedic episodes. "Our Man Bashier" is my favorite holodeck malfunction episode. "Little Green Men" is a really fun time travel episode. Shoot, I found "The Magnificent Ferengi" fun. And of course, "Trials and Tribble-ations" is probably at the top of the list for these type of episodes. There were some turds in this category ("Little Ship" and "Let He who is Without Sin" I'm looking at you), but the DS9 writers seemed to have a good handle on the light hearted episodes.

On an aside, about "Sacrifice of Angels", I didn't mind the deus-ex-machina ending that much when I first watched it. The Prophets really hadn't appeared much in between "Emissary" and "Sacrifice." Using them made a lot of sense to me at the time. What I didn't like was it basically opened the flood gates for the Prophets/Pah Wraiths crap that ran through the rest of DS9. Oh, and the wacky "line" nature of space combat it introduced to the series.

OK I recently got Ds9 series 4 and 5. So most of my picks will be from there. 'No particular order' for me as well. Despite the numbers!

1) Starship Down. An nice ensemble episode. Many elements, some good space action. Some character stuff between Sisko and Kira and almost the entire main cast gets a moment. Even Odo who's only in the last scene.

2) Rules Of Engagement. Worf fucked up and now he's on trial. I mainly like it for the Klingon Lawyer Ch'Pok. A nice example of where a klingon doesn't have to be a warrior to display a klingon mindset. Slightly let down by its resolution.

3)Trials and Tribble-ations. Do I really need to explain? Our wonder at seeing the TOS Crew is only matched by the DS9 cast's.

4)In the Cards. Silly fun, best part is Jake and Nog's scene parodying Picard and Lily from First Contact.

5) Field of Fire. An Ezri episode that's not about who she's going to bang. Excellent.

Here's my top ten for TNG.

• Elementary, Deat Data.
• Q Who.
• Who Watches The Watchers?
• The Defector
• Yesterday's Enterprise
• Sins of The Father
• Best of Both Worlds, Part One
• Ensign Ro
• Unification
• Lower Decks

I have to agree with most everyone's top tens in TNG here, so I won't post my own, but I'm surprised no one's mentioned "Darmok". Interspecies communication and first contact should really be no where near as easy as the universal translator makes it out to be, and this episode comes damn close to depicting how hard it should be to talk to an alien. I love Paul Winfield's performance and how he's unrecognizable from Star Trek II, and although I don't exactly understand how you can teach your kids language solely based on metaphor (they must use a lot of pictures) I like how emphasis is placed on the importance of retaining our own myths into the future.

I also think Riker's actions were reprehensible and deserve at least a board of inquiry. To risk both the Enterprise and a shooting war at a first contact right off the bat just to get the captain back aboard--didn't they talk about this at the academy? I doubt Picard would have approved, not to mention the Admiralty.

From Riker's perspective, it appeared as thought the Tamarians had initiated hostilities first. IIRC they tried sending a shuttle down first, which was then fired upon by the Tamarian vessel. He only shot them with the phasers to disable their bullshit device for disabling the transporters.

In any case, I really liked that episode. Especially when Picard arrives on the bridge and breaks the language barrier.

Skylon wrote:6) Brothers - I still can't believe Rick Berman wrote this.

This was earlier on in Rick Berman's tenure as writer and producer, before he became more creatively more burned out as the 1990s wore on - Jeri Taylor, Brannon Braga, and Michael Pillar were also generally more successful in TNG than they were in VOY.

Don't forget that in Trek there were such things as uncredited rewrites, so someone else on staff may have polished up Berman's draft.

Big Orange wrote:

Skylon wrote:6) Brothers - I still can't believe Rick Berman wrote this.

This was earlier on in Rick Berman's tenure as writer and producer, before he became more creatively more burned out as the 1990s wore on - Jeri Taylor, Brannon Braga, and Michael Pillar were also generally more successful in TNG than they were in VOY.

The thing with Berman is, he doesn't have many writing credits in TNG, DS9 and VOY. And even fewer solo ("Brothers" and "A Matter of Time"). And his Enterprise credits, which are the most extensive, are all with Brannon Braga (and maybe a sign of the problems with the series, if the two show-runners needed to produce a lot of scripts).

Berman never struck me as a professional writer. Hence my surprise about "Brothers". However, as noted, TNG did some "roundtable" type writing. Apparently, Michael Piller's suggestion added Lore to the script (the character was absent from Berman's first draft).

Piller, was of course one of the stronger TNG writer/producers. Brannon Braga, sorta struck me as a one-trick pony. During TNG, his best episodes were about really crazy ideas: "Cause and Effect" and "Parallels" for example. By VOY the tricks got stale.

Skylon wrote:Piller, was of course one of the stronger TNG writer/producers. Brannon Braga, sorta struck me as a one-trick pony. During TNG, his best episodes were about really crazy ideas: "Cause and Effect" and "Parallels" for example. By VOY the tricks got stale.

Braga was a one trick pony when his long term story ideas focused almost entirely on time travel.

However Michael Piller's not completely blameless and seemed to begin to burn out when overseeing the first two somewhat muddled seasons of DS9 and DS9 only really found its feet when a new producer with fresh ideas (Ira Steven Behr) was introduced, and had a more coherent stategy with the show, although to be fair DS9's first two seasons were still better than most of the first two seasons of VOY. Ira Steven Behr was attributed with the critically popular yet still controversial Dominion War Arc; it may not have pleased everyone, but at least the writing team knew what they were doing with long term story ideas and character developments.

Jeri Taylor after writing high quality TNG episodes such as "The Wounded" began to lose the plot with TNG's weird, boring "Sub Rosa" from S7 and she stayed on with VOY (creative stagnation). VOY still turned out good episodes amidst the dross but those episodes were mainly attributed to the rather underrated Joe Menosky (another TNG veteran) and Bryan Fuller.

My favourite TNG episodes partially written by Joe Menosky are "Darmok", "The Chase" and "The Nth Degree". He also did "First Contact" in conjunction with practically the rest of the TNG writing team.

Big Orange wrote:Ira Steven Behr was attributed with the critically popular yet still controversial Dominion War Arc; it may not have pleased everyone, but at least the writing team knew what they were doing with long term story ideas and character developments.

Yeah, Behr was the Dominion mastermind, but the others contributed in different ways.

I know Moore was a strong proponent of the War and pushed for it to continue as long as they could -- hence why its resolution was tied to the finale.