My wife and I watched the 2009 movie again tonight. Each time I see it I like it more and more.
This is the first time I noticed an "Enterprise" (show) reference. When meeting Scotty, he mentions he could beam a living thing from one planet to the other. And that he tested it with Admiral Archer's beagle...which hasn't shown up yet. LOL

Between enjoying playing STO, ST Legacy (again) and this, I've got the urge to watch the first few movies again. I saw them pretty cheap on blu-ray on amazon, under $50 for all of the TOS movies. Re-watching Enterprise again lately and started watching Voyager as well, which is better than I thought previously.
Too bad there can't be more more sci fi with as much content as ST.

It's highly doubtful we'll ever see Star Trek on tv again. None of the major networks would be interested and none of the cable channels could probably afford to carry it except for maybe a premium channel like HBO. At least we have the movie revival though with JJ Abrams and in fact, the next Star Trek film is currently in the midst of its shooting schedule as I post this message!

I like all of the Star Trek movies but of course some more than others.

My personal ranking of the Trek films,

Star Trek II
Star Trek (JJ Abrams)
Star Trek VI
ST: First Contact
Star Trek IV
ST: The Motion Picture
Star Trek III
ST: Nemesis
ST: Generations
Star Trek V
Star Trek Insurrection

.....Must resist.... Ohhh i must resist.... can I...... nooooooo...... Ohh god, i can't stop it......


How many of those movies involved time travel...

Meh..



There.... i said it... <runs away>

A few but still a minority!

ST IV
ST: First Contact
Star Trek

Lemme see...

Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Star Trek (2009)
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Star Trek VI: Generations
Star Trek VII: First Contact
Star Trek VIII: Whatever
Star Trek IX: Blah
Star Trek V: Dear God, WHy have you allowed this

Hmmm...

Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan
Star Trek: First Contact
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Star Trek (2009)
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

Star Trek: Nemesis
Star Trek: Generations
Star Trek: Insurrection
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Star Trek V: Final Frontier

You forgot Generations, even though it's limited to only Kirk.

I've recently rewatched all the series up to Voyager, on Season 7 of that. After that I'll be rewatching Enterprise. I may or may not go for TNG in HD.


The Jedi Master

I tried watching TNG a while back. It's not the same as it lives in my memory. Even season 4 and up when it got better it's still not that good to revisit.

Is it that you think the show hasn't aged that well or have your perceptions changed as you've gotten older?

the last 2 TNG Movies sucked to the point where i watched them, but i dont remember enough other than Data was blown up, and some Admiral guy had his face stretched... while picard was falling in love with the 400 yr old hot lady on the surface...

Nimoy tweeted a few days ago the final cast for ST:II(2012)

I'm still bummed that Benicio del Toro won't be in it. He would have been great.

First was the last film, while the last 2 were the next-to-last one. Insurrection really was just a big-budget episode though. The plot was nothing more than that. Of course, as Frakes remarked that was because the touchy-feely producer of DS9's early seasons was behind it. In his commentary he did with Sirtis for the film, he expressed exasperation and disapproval of several parts of ST9's script.
Nemesis was a better script with a better bad guy hampered by being directed by an editor. The guy was a world-famous editor, but directing? In short, not long after ST 10 he returned to editing alone.



The Jedi Master

oh and Picards clone..

Shinzon. I thought he was quite a compelling villain IMHO. Tom Hardy of course is EVERYWHERE now between The Dark Knight Rises, that spy comedy with Chris Pine and Inception.

It's probably having seen the reruns too much over the years. LOL Watching these on Netflix, you see the episode description and immediately think "oh yeah...that one." No need to watch.
I think that the talent difference between Patrick Stewart and the rest of the cast stands out too much to me now. They're all likable, just not all on the same playing field. Brent Spiner is close, but he's still not the same level.
As far as FX, I think it's still fine. I like the CGI of that era.

Also, I really like the ship on Enterprise. Bulkheads all over the place, small quarters, they dock and use shuttles, they don't have a replicator in every room, etc. Somehow TNG and that Enterprise just seem too resort-like. I'm seeing most Voyager episodes for the first time now, and it seems to be more to my taste than TNG these days. It's more like Enterprise, but the cast isn't quite as good and the characters are pretty bland. Good story though, and a cool ship that keeps getting upgraded.

Voyager in Hd.......

2 Channels air Voyager now in SD (PillarBox), .....

Fully agree with you with the resort-like look to the Enterprise on TNG. If I recall correctly, you even see what looks like a shopping mall and a day care center in a couple of episodes. Oh, and even the seats on the bridge look way too posh and comfy to be even remotely military. They look like seats you'd see on a cruiseship.

I guess that's a result of the slightly utopian approach and the level of technical prowess assumed for the period - structure and things involved in maintaining the star-ship aren't assumed to take up much space, so the interior designers can have more of a field day. Another thing they had a habit of doing is making things "overly bright". Too much key lighting and you lose a lot of the detail that you can get in the shadows.
I barely remember any of the TNG movies, and although I've only seen the latest one once, I remember almost nothing of it, other than having a severe inability to suspend reality.

I agree with the Enterprise-D in TNG being a very comfortable cruise ship. But wasn't the reason behind that because it was an exploration vessel and not a military vessel, so that the crew wouldn't be long times away from their family? I guess it's also due to the utopian nature of Star Trek.

Actually as soon as the franchise became a bit darker with the introduction of the Borg and Dominion, the ships such as Defiant, Voyager and Enterprise-E became far more military.

Jaz

Galaxy Class Starships and Sovereign are Considered "Exploration Cruisers" by the federation........

Yep, school and some kind of gift store. Why do they have stores? They have no currency and they all use the replicators for everything. And they're in each room!
I remember one with a barber shop. Dance workout rooms etc. One of the best episodes is the one where they found Scotty on the Dyson sphere. They give him quarters on the ship and he's shocked at what the room is like. "Where have ya put me!" LOL

I do remember Picard saying he never agreed with children (or families?) on a star ship, but he understood the reasoning due to the time in space.

It was my understanding that the Sovereign class was specifically designed for battle and especially to fight the Borg?

I think he's going by STO. They're classified as exploration or he
avy cruisers,science,escort or shuttle on there. Only 1 or 2 cruisers are called battle cruisers.

If I remember from DS9, they made the Defiant class to fight the Borg, but scrapped the program and the only one made went to DS9 for the Jem'hadar war. Then got blowed up by a Borg cube. That worked well.

Apparently, the interior design of the Galaxy Class is not too popular in the 21st century either, since this guy can't sell his apartment:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-16772477

They made more Defiant-class vessels. the USS Valiant (Nog's school ship) was one of them.

the Defiant was built to fight the borg,

Enterprise - E is considered a Warship and was also designed to Fight Delta Quadrant Enemies.,
But the Soveriegn Class Enterprise was not originally slated to bear teh name Enterprise, it was under Construction and when NCC-1701-D was Destroyed on Veridian III, the First New Sovereign Class was Given the name Enterprise name and Ship Number (NCC-1701-E).
Since it was the Most Advanced Ship Starfleet had and the First to come of the Assembly Line, Enterprise D was Scheduled for a Re-Fit around 5 years after the time it was destroyed.

The First Sovereign Class ship was to be Called the U.S.S. Sovereign Originally.

Galaxy Glass was a Exploration Cruiser, But since its the flagship, it has weapons to defend itself, But its Primary Mission is to Explore, and was like that in the Star trek Encyclopedia which I've had since like 6th grade (im 28 now). (This book was like 4 inches thick, it did not have any of the New Era Ships (TNG Enterprise E+/NX-01), Those are listed in the Online Encyclopedia and the newer 2010 Revision, along with NCC-1701-ALT (JJ Abrams Enterprise)

They Made 2, the Defiant and the San Paulo, the San paulo was Re-Named Defiant after the Defiant was destroyed.,

They made a lot more during the DS9 timeline. You see them in the battle scenes during the Dominion War. At least 8 are shown in the series (including 2 in an Voyager episode).

USS Defiant (prototype/class-original)
USS San Paulo (renamed USS Defiant after the Breen destroys the original Deffie)
USS Valiant (Red Squad training ship)

Deep Space Nine episode "A Call to Arms" has several Defiants being shown in addition to the Defiant, during the 'Second Battle of Deep Space Nine'.
Voyager episode "Message in a Bottle" has two Defiants being shown.

A small ship like the Defiant has plenty of uses. Good speed and power but needs far less manning than the bigger ships. Not really suited to long-term exploration of course.

Anyway, TNG's early seasons were colored by Gene's influence. Once he got sick and stopped running the show, it got darker and the later series all mirrored that.

Many of the cheesy, jaw-dropping, or groan-inducing things about the 1701-D seemed to evaporate by season 4 into the mists of subspace.



The Jedi Master

In terms of menacing, I always thought the Shadows ships on Babylon 5 met the requirement as well as the Vorlon cruisers. The Goa'uld pyramid ships from Star gate 1, not so much.

The pyramids are more practical, though!



The Jedi Master

They're not very good at preventing very nasty things from beaming into them though.

I liked the clunky look of the earth ships from B5. Once you saw the Mimbari, Vorlon... heck, all the alien ships, you knew we were in over our heads.

I find it interesting how the Earth Alliance Omega class was based very closely on the "Leonov" from "2010".

http://images.wikia.com/2001/images/b/b9/Leonov.jpg

http://en.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/536469

Anubis' Ship from Stargate maybe,

but the standard Pyramid ships are all made of gold and stuff....

Wraith hive's and cruisers from Atlantis were awesome.

Defiant was the First Prototype (Sisko was part of the Development Team), of what was supposed to be a FLEET, and was nearly destroyed during trials, Project was then cancelled, and Defiant was put into storage.

Later during DS9 at the start of the Dominion War, The Defiant was pulled out of storage by Sisko and O'Brien (Who was transferred from Enterprise D) upgraded it and fixed nearly all of the issues,

During mutliple communications sent out from Voyager, they contained logs about the Borg, and their general mission to assimulate Earth etc,

Starfleet was convinced by Sisko, Picard, and Janeway's reports enough, and that the Defiant was needed, Starfleet began mass production.

the San Paulo was the USS Defiant's replacement, but they decided to re-name it USS Defiant and changes were made to the shields to prevent the breen from doing the same thing to the replacement.

The USS Valiant was Rag/Shakedown/Training Ship to train elite cadets, and was on a training mission and caught behind enemy lines, after the overseeing instructors were killed the senior cadet was given command by the senior instructor, Valiant continued on a mission to find some new battle ship, and was destroyed as a result of the cadet commander's overconfidence.

During Enterprise E's Battle with the borg in the opening of “first contact” there were about 5 Defiant class ships on screen, one of them being the USS Defiant.

By time Enterprise E was commissioned and Voyager returned home, and the Final Battles of the Dominion War, Starfleet had a fleet of Defiant class ships.

The only ship that wasn’t mass produced for sure was the Delta Flyer, this was a custom made ship, similar to the BlackBird/Roselin from Battlestar Galactica. As in it was a Crew effort individualized to that ship alone. And was destroyed during a mission to infiltrate a borg tactical cube, the ship was built w/ a mix of Federation and Borg technology.

The Delta Flyer II was a rebuild w/ design changes after the First one was destroyed in the fore mentioned mission.

I liked the ship that came apart into 4 pieces, despite having Andy Dick as an EMH. I think it was called Prometheus, in an odd cross with SG-1 where they named their ship that after O'Neil failed to get it named Enterprise.



The Jedi Master

Multi-Vector Assault mode...

I saw that Voyager episode just the other day. Cool ship!
I think it's a paid option in STO, as well as a D with the saucer section separation.

I feel the same about TNG; the special effects are now in the league of TOS. But I watch it still for the camaraderie and the stories now- Only TOS and TNG had that believable friendships between characters. The others tried real hard and occasionally succeeded, but not like the original(s).

We bought that blu-ray set of the first 6 movies with the original cast this week.
The TMP movie was nicely converted, other than one spot I noticed where there was a spot that looked like vaseline on the lens in the lower part of the screen. Otherwise looked and sounded great in HD. Maybe a dull storyline, but still a lot of fun seeing the additions that shaped the following shows and movies. I remember being amazed when this one came out, a huge change from the show.

We watched ST 2 tonight, which I think most consider possibly the best of all of the movies. I was surprised at how little attention this movie got! Compared to the first movie, this one looked closer to VHS than blu-ray. Noticed afterward that all movies say "remastered", but this one just says "restored". I wonder if that means the original material was damaged somewhere along the line?
The ending never fails to choke me up, even to this day. My wife didn't remember the movie or #3, so the cliffhanger is in full effect. "He's DEAD? How is that?!" LOL

I discovered something about myself when I first watched Babylon 5 and when I re-watched ST: TOS recently. If the stories, characters and dialogue are good enough, I end up ignoring the cheap looking special effects and sets anyway. This is especially true with Babylon 5. I admit that when I first started watching it, it was really difficult to ignore the crude CGI and cheap looking sets but after the brilliant story-arcs started kicking in and after I started to warm up to the characters it was no longer an issue.

Actually, that was deliberate. There are several shots where they used what I believe is called a split diopter lens. It was done so that objects at two different distances from the camera could be in focus at the same time. Otherwise, one would be in focus and the other blurry. The problem is the line between the 2 parts of the lens is blurry. With Bluray it really stands out.




Actually, ST2 got the MOST work. All the others were simply remastered (which means take the original negative and scan it at high res for the BD transfer). The restoration involved taking the negative, scanning it, and then working on it frame by frame to fix flaws. If you had the ST2 DVD it looks far worse than the BD.


My only disappointment was that after the "special edition" DVD releases years earlier, the BD set is "theatrical" only. The 2000 director's cut of ST:TMP was great with new effects shots and re-edited so that some things moved a bit smoother and less...snooze-worthy. Also, ST2 and ST6 had extra scenes on the DVD version that I missed (especially the Col West scenes in ST6).



The Jedi Master

I definitely seem to be in the minority with ST: TMP because I've always found the plot to be engaging and enjoyable. It's definitely slower paced compared to most of the other ST movies but to me, that's not a flaw.

TBH, I watched ToS when i was REALLY young, re-runs and my moms family were "trekkies".

Then Watched TNG, Q Episodes were funny, but 70% of the episodes were random and not part of any "Story Arc".

DS9, I tried and tried to want to watch this one, but it was boring to me, I stopped watching up till the last season when I rejoined.

ENTERPRISE, watched 1 episode, the borg one, and that was it.


TBH Voyager, was the only series I watched from Start to finish, The story line was there, the Arc, the bad guys constantly changed, special effects were 1st generation CGI and not Scale models filmed upside down w/ effects added via lighting and post FX and once 7 of 9 joined, .. umm yeah...

ST: TOS was entirely made up of stand-alone episodes except for the 2 parter "The Menagerie" so TNG was actually a step up in that category!

TOS didn't had a Q...

But they did have Harcourt Fenton "Harry" Mudd.

That was a great character! Both "I Mudd" and "Mudd's Women" are great episodes.

For me, TOS had great writing. TNG, not so much. I thought Enterprise was weak but underrated. I didn't like Voyager much, although there were a few decent episodes, I can't really remember that much about them. DS9 was slow to get going, but once the Dominion War started it was pretty good, and I think I liked Sisko over just about any of the other captains except maybe Kirk.

It's obvious there is little consensus on the ST series.



The Jedi Master