(Also available from Starland mirror site)
First, some comments from previous columns . . .
Corey Hines, Hamilton, ON: Regarding a comment a couple of weeks ago about some Galaxy Class starships were put away and could be completed within a year. This explains a nit you made regarding "Best of Both Worlds, Part II" when you wondered how the fleet would be up within a year and it took years to build the Enterprise.
Phil: Perhaps!
Gareth Wilson: Voyager has a serious problem with the Prime Directive. As it travels through the Delta Quadrant the crew somehow has to keep it fueled and maintained, so they have to trade with the various races they encounter. But what can Voyager give them in return without violating the Prime Directive? What if someone says "I'll give you 500 tons of antimatter for that cool 'transporter' thingie"? Perhaps Voyager goes through space stealing spare parts and fuel, and paying for repairs with IOUs.
Corey Hines, Hamilton, ON: I don't think one has to worry about other speices finding out this method of time travel since there is at least 15 ways to travel though time. Here is a list:
Super Velocity - "The Naked Time" (TOS), "Tommorow is Yesterday" (TOS),
(presumably) "Assignment: Earth" (TOS), STIV
The Guardian of Forever - "The City on the Edge of Forever" (TOS)
Atavachron - "All Our Yesterdays" (TOS)
Ship's Explosion - "Time Squared" (TNG)
Weapon's Fire - "Yesterday's Enterprise" (TNG)
In future, time travel is done with ease - "Captain's Holiday" (TNG), "A
Matter of Time" (TNG), "Future's End, Parts 1 & 2" (VGR)
Devidia II aliens - "Time's Arrow, Parts 1 & 2" (TNG)
The Q Continuum - "Tapestry" (TNG), "All Good Things..." (TNG), "Death
Wish" (VGR)
Unknown - "Fisrtborn" (TNG)
Chroniton particles with a singularity - "Past Tense, Parts 1 & 2" (DS9)
The Nexus - "Star Trek Generations"
Subspace fractures - "Time and Again" (VGR)
Radiation and quantum singularity - "Visionary" (DS9)
Kemacite and warp speeds or atom bombs - "Little Green Men" (DS9)
The wormhole aliens - "Accession" (DS9), "Trials and Tribble-ations"
(DS9)
The Borg - "Star Trek: First Contact"
There also a recent DS9 episode dealing with the Defiant going back 200 years. I can't remember the episode's name or how it was done.
Phil: If I recall in "Children of Time" there was some kind of a weird field around the planet!
Corey Hines, Hamilton, ON: Last week I was told that the scene with Voyager fighting the Borg was in a trailer. I looked around and I found the trailer and found the scene. Is this considered canonical? After all the other ship scenes show the Enterprise-D. That wasn't in the movie. So is Voyager canonical?
Phil: Now that's an interesting question, isn't it? ;-) My guess would be no but it's fun to find!
Kris Harper: With regard to Voyager being in the First Contact promo, I think that if you look closely that effect is the "Antimatter Spread" from The Best of Both Worlds. Thet probably just took that shot and put the voyager model into it. So I think Paramount just wanted a promo that didn't use the Enterprise D.
Ronan Mitchell: The same thing happened in the episode "When the bough breaks" so we can discount the possibility of Q somehow protecting the ship. Well noticed, by the way!
Phil: For those of you who missed the question last week, Stefan wondered how the inertial dampners could function well enough to keep the crew alive when the Enterprise was tossed far faster than it was designed to go in "Where No One Has Gone Before."
Eddie Marshall of Hampshire, UK: In fact we in the UK have all the episodes up to the season three episode "Macrocosm" on sell through video with two episodes on each tape each one of which costs roughly 12.00. We also have Deep Space Nine episodes up to and including "The Begotten". This is not meant as a boast. I'm not sure of the technical side but in the UK we can get VCRs that play NTSC tapes, if you in the US can get machines that play PAL tapes maybe you could import tapes from the UK.
Ronan Mitchell: Both Voyager and Deep Space Nine have been available on video on this side of the Atlantic for a good while now. It might be because we don't get to see the episodes until well after they've been shown in America - for example, "Apocalypse Rising" has still to be shown on television over here!
David Fuller of London, England: In the 30th May column you noted that Voyager is already released in the UK. This is true. In fact this side of the Atlantic video is where you see Voyager first. Released this week was season 3's 'Alter Ego' and we'll have top wait another two weeks for the next 2 episodes.
Voyager here is shown on Sky One - a satellite delivered subscription service - Mondays at 8pm. They are not far behind the videos with this coming Monday's episode being season 3's 'The Q and the Grey'. Sky One is available to less than 20% of the country - so most people get their Voyager from BBC 2, Sundays at....well it changes every week but usually about 6.45pm. They are well behind with last Sunday's 'Meld' from season 2 and this Sunday.... oops no Voyager because they are showing a military parade in front of the Queen instead.
Now my question. In the last couple of episodes released on video, there appears to be a new character in engineering who would appear to be a Romulan. Is he? And where did he spring from? Have I missed something in a previous episode?
Phil: Are you sure he's Romulan? There was a Vulcan engineer named Vorik who cause a few problems because of the "blood fever" this season but I can't recall a Romulan crewmember on Voyager.
Ed Watson of Downingtown, PA: Concerning Jason Barnes question about the brash reflections; How about alternating the two shows by season? Starting in the fall, you could do DS9 for a year then switch back to Voyager. If nothing else, it would be a nice change of pace. Also, I think I read somewhere at the NCIEO that DS9 would only run 1 more season. I just got my ST fan club magazine, and Rick Berman says in it that he is planning on 2 more seasons of DS9. Either way, it would be nice to have at least one season of DS9 Brash Reflections before it goes off the air.
Phil:Well . . . , I'm the type of person who believes that if you start something, you should follow it through to completion. I've started Voyager. I intend to finish Voyager. (Unless something comes along that makes it impossible for me to proceed). If I start doing Brash Reflections on DS9, I would have to bring to it the same commitment and I simply do not want to do two shows at the same time! As for a seventh season of DS9, it certainly might go seven but all the actors' contracts are up and the end of six and usually actors want more money for renewal and the shows ratings haven't been stellar (sorry, bad pun). That puts Paramount in the situation of looking at the bottom line and saying, "This is how much it's going to cost to put on a seventh season versus what we can expect in revenues . . ." We'll see!
Corey Hines, Hamilton, ON Regarding "Six Seasons of DS9" from 5/23/97 I have a feeling DS9 will go for seven seasons since TNG was in the same situation. It was only supposed to go for six season but Paramount extended the cast's contract for one more. I think the same will happen to DS9.
Phil: Only time will tell!
Jason Liu: I can think of a few reasons why [disengaging the safties] should be available. No one can forsee all of the possible situations that could arise. Sometimes, it might be useful to disengage the safeties in order to try a last-ditch measure. For instance, I remember in TNG when Geordi tried to reroute power from the inertial dampening field to some other critical system (shields?). The computer told him that that would bring the IDF levels below safe standards. However, Geordi decided the situation was bad enough that he needed the energy, so he overrode the safety protocol. Another example is auto-destruct. That is essentially removing all the safeties on the matter-antimatter reaction assembly. Of course, this is not something you would want to do, but, occasionally, the context of the situation requires it. Anyway, my point is that sometimes such flexibility would be useful, and may even save the ship.
Eddie Marshall of Hampshire, UK: In the episode "The Thaw" doesn't Janeway make a comment asking why people enjoy running holodeck programs with the safety turned off ?
Phil: Seems like I remember that too but I'm short on time this morning to look it up!
Paul Walker: Most of the times when this happens, it is stupid for them to override, but I can think of at least two examples when it was beneficial. Shades of Grey when Dr. Pulaski gave O'Brian a medical override on the transporters (O'Brian had asked about this before the Dr. even went down to the planet), and First Contact when the Captain used the tommy gun to kill the Borg.
Also, I can think of times when overriding would be useful as in setting up a holographic combat training (personal combat) when feeling some pain would help get the point across, and in setting up a holographic dilithium chamber to regulate matter and antimatter to run the ship while the real chamber was down for repairs.
Brian Lombard: There's an even funnier [error] on [the video box of ] "Star Trek: The Motion Picture". The actress who plays Doctor Chapel, the real-life wife of Star Trek's creator, a woman associated with Star Trek since the beginning, her name is spelled MASEL Barrett.
Phil: It's spelled right on mine! Evidently, the creators caught that one and fixed it! ;-)
On to the questions . . . .
Corey Hines, Hamilton, ON: Since both the Borg and Q belong to Voyager writers, does this mean that Changelings belong to DS9 writers? They can use Changelings on VGR since the Founders sent 100 infants across the galaxy.
Phil: No idea! It's up to the creators to decide how they carve up the resources!
Scott Vogt, Cedar Rapids, IA: Does anyone else find it odd that the inertial dampeners(dampers?) can compensate for a speed increase of 0-Warp 9 without so much as a shudder for the crew, yet any shot to the shields throws people around? Even when other weapons do no damage, the ship rocks.
Phil: The Tech Manual explains that there is a slight lag in the activation of the compensation effect for the inertial dampners. In the acceleration to warp this can be calculated out but in a battle the system has to wait until a hit occurs to do anything about it. Of course, the real-world reason is that battles wouldn't be very exciting if people weren't getting thrown around (and the Tech Manual admits this as well)!
Christopher Querry: What if the Smithsonian museum decided to put together a time capsule? It would contain a T.V., V.C.R., and only one Star Trek video tape. The capsule would be closed in the year 2001, and reopened in the year 3001. Which tape of Trek should go in?
Points to consider:
1. People in the future may know nothing about Trek.
2. You can't enclose any kind of message to give viewers a back story.
3. Your choice may encourage those in the future to resurrect Trek.
Would you..
Pack "the best" Trek episode?
Pack "an average" Trek episode?
Pack an episode with lots of gadgets that don't exist now, but might exist
in the future?
Pack an episode that deals with current social situations?
Pack an episode that somehow made history?
Phil: Personally, I'd forget the Trek tape and put in a documentary on life on Earth at the end of the 20th Century! For me, Trek isn't profound enough for this experiment. Trek is just fun! It's entertainment. But . . . if "somebody" decided that the time capsule had to have a Trek episode and I couldn't voice my objection and I was forced to choose or that "somebody" would kill my family . . . since I'm not allowed to give a back story, I'd have to say either "The Cage" or "Where No Man Has Gone Before."
Matt Nelson: Could anybody give me the stardates for Star Trek: First Contact, and the most recent stardates given for a Star Trek: DS9 episode?
Phil: The stardate for First Contact was something like 50893 and according to a note I received from Ed Watson Children of Time carried a stardate of 50814.2. Sorry I can't be more specific. I collect this stuff when I do a Guide and I have done a Guide for either of these two stories yet. (The DS9 Guide only covers the first four seasons.) Anybody?
Ronan Mitchell: Where did you get the names for the characters on the logo? (There names appear when the site is being loaded onto my computer).
Phil: I happen to like the name "Fred". "Sally" is an homage to 3rd Rock From The Sun (which can be a funny show but unfortunately gets trashy at times). And, "Thonk" is "Bingo Thonk" from the unabridged version of NextGen Guide side bar 'The Creator Is Always Right." You can read about Bingo and his girlfriend Zzowie in the October 1994 Nitpickers Guild Newsletter under "Humor Not Included."
Eric Brasure: Did the Voyager ever send a subspace message to Starfleet telling them what happened to the ship and crew? I remember something about sending messages to family members, but did it ever get done?
Phil: Only the creators know for sure! The only place I can recall that Voyager prepared to do this was in "Eye of the Needle" where Voyager discovered a small wormhole and was able to communicate with a Romulan on the other end. Unfortunately, he was fifty years (?) in the past and so Voyager didn't send the message. (I think! It's been a while since I saw this episode and we didn't do a Brash Reflection on it since it came from the first season.)
Paul Walker: I would be VERY interested in finding out what the founding date for Star Fleet was on our calandar. If anyone knows of a website that has the Star Date listing for TOS episodes, that sould be nice too. My resources are packed up pending a move.
Phil: Not sure that the founding date for Starfleet has ever been established! The Federation was founded in 2161 (according to dialogue in "The Outcast" I believe). Interesting enough, Kirk refers to something like a "United Earth Force" in a first season episode of Classic Trek causing some to wonder if there was a Starfleet at the beginning of Classic Trek! As far as a stardate listing on the Web for Classic Trek . . . anybody?
Matt Nelson: Does anyone know the full names of Worf's adoptive parents, the Rozhenkos? Also, have Dax's quarter locations ever been canonically stated on DS9? Thanx for all youre help; I'm writing a piece of fanfiction and want as many details as possible to be accurate! Some nitpickers read! ;)
Phil: I believe Worf's adoptive parents are named Sergey and Helena. They are introduced in "Family." I do not believe anyone's quarters on DS9 have ever been canonically established aside from the fact that they probably all live in the habitat ring.
Clay: If Lursa was killed in "Generations" what in the world happened to her baby she was supposed to be pregnant with? In fact what impact does that have on the TNG episode where Alexander as an adult comes back to change history. I assumed that the one who attacked them on the planet was Lursa's son because of the d'ktahg they found. I wonder what this does to the flow of history and what it changed. If she died before the baby was born the events of the TNG ep couldn't happen unless they came from a future in an alternate universe which is something that gives me a headache to consider. Any thoughts?
Phil: The star date on "Firstborn" (the future Alexander episode) is 47779.4 and the star date on Generations is 48632.4. That's almost a year, so there would be time for her to bring the baby to term. (Especially since we don't know much about Klingon gestation times.) No doubt Lursa's son is being raised by some crazed dissident who will avenge his mother's death in the future!
Corey Hines, Hamilton, ON: This isn't a question more of a explianation. In "Ysterday's Enterprise", many plot summeries including yours stated that the cause of the war between the Federation and the Klingons was because when negotiations broke down, no symbolic act prevented the war. I feel it went like this. Data said the Enterprise-C was last seen at the Klingon outpost Narendra III. Riker stated that there was no record of the Romulans attacking the E-C. And Picard said the outpost was destroyed. Since there was no record of the Romulans and that the E-C was last reported there, I think the Klingons thought that the E-C destroyed the outpost. This would cause the Klingons to declare war. I'm just wondering if I'm the only person who sees it this war.
Phil: Certainly, you're welcome to speculate anything you'd like but the creators do have Data speculate that the disappearance of the E-C circumvented the symbolic act that headed off the war. Since Data is one of the heros and heros are usually right . . .
Kelly: Would someone please tell me why DS9 ratings are so bad. I have to confess that I find it so much better than Voyager. Perhaps the action isn't as dramatic, but the stories seem better. The relationships between the characters are much more developed to the point where you actually care about them. I find that Voyager is still working this and I have not found mysekf emotionally attached to any of them except maybe the Paris character. There are parts of Voyager that I really like, but sometimes the technobabble is overwhelming and I'm always yelling at the TV telling Torres to shut up.
DS9 has some really great moments and stories. I get warm fuzzies from the show. When I am watching the show I feel like they are my friends and we are hanging out in my living room together. I used to feel the same way about Next Gen. And having Worf on DS9 is a real bonus. But all I keep hearing about is how poorly it is doing in the ratings. I think that in my area, part of it is that they keep "Quantum Leaping" ( a pshrase I made up after the demise of Quantum Leap because I feel they moved the show around so much that you couldn't find it to watch it) DS9 around and in my area it used to come one at 10:35 pm on Sunday nights - a school night and work night. Now it is on Fox at 10:00 on Sunday nights. (Not a whole lot better.) I have to tape it and watch it another night because it comes on so late. I think that that does not help it any. STTNG and Voyager had and have a good spot 6:00 on Saturday nights. It is easy to watch.
I really resent the fact that DS9 is on at this time. In the first two seasons it was on Friday nights at a decent hour. It then got moved to Sunday nights still like at 8:00 pm. Finally it got bumped to late night. What is up with that? I know it is up to my local station and I have written to complain, but they don't care.
I love DS9 and I hope it gets picked up for another season. Captain Sisko is the coolest. I love when he does his "Hawk" character from Spenser For Hire. What a trip!!
Phil: Welcome to the cold cruel world of television programming! Certainly, if I had the definitive answer on how and why ratings come about I could move to Hollywood and quickly become a millionaire. Figuring out how to make a show that gets fabulous ratings is the alchemy of the latter part of the 20th century! There is really only one trite answer that I can possibly give for why DS9's rating aren't very good and that is: People don't watch the show! (Sorry, sorry.) And that's why it gets bounced around in the time slots. If more people watched the show, the television stations would make more money selling advertising and they would treat it with greater kindness. Television is not ultimately about storytelling, it's about selling advertising. If you can't sell the advertising because you don't have the numbers, it doesn't matter how good your episodes are!
Now, I can give you some *opinions* on why less people watch the show than watched NextGen. The NextGen Formula was modeled on the Classic Trek formula. That formula was a known quantity. When DS9 came along, I felt like the creators were trying to say, "Okay we know we just fudged together a clone of Classic Trek, now we're going to do something that's uniquely our own and your really going to be impressed and you're going to love it more that NextGen because we great!"
Unfortunately, many were not impressed (and, of course, cancelling the wildly popular NextGen certainly didn't win the creators any awards with the fans). Not that DS9 isn't a good show, it's just different and it's different enough that some fans turned it off in the early days and once you lose fans it's tough to get them back.
In addition, I have felt that the creators, at times in the past, have been downright antagonistic toward the diehard fans. This has always seemed like a HORRIBLE mistake to me! True, fandom may only constitute a small portion of the people who watch the show but those people are your "engine". Classic Trek would have never made it to the movies without its "cheerleaders."
Also, it's very, very, very difficult not to get complacent when you're on top. DS9 started in the midst of NextGen riding this huge wave of popularity. I personally feel--and this is just my personal opinion--that the creators felt in the beginning of DS9 that the fans would watch anything they put out there. For me at least, a Trek series never really seems to hit its stride until the third or fourth season. Compare that to other television shows that must come on strong in the first season and stay strong in order to survive. For example, there are some great episodes in the first season of X-Files. All through the first season, you can feel the creators of that show scrambling to do everything they can to make a high quality show that viewers will enjoy. (Same thing with Profiler and Pretender.) On the other hand, it seems to me that DS9 and even Voyager just puttered along in their first few seasons, tossing out a show here and there--getting the job done but without a lot of fire! Eventually, I think that relaxation catches up with you!
And finally, it is a sad fact of life that successful entities have a tendency to eat their own children. Witness X-Files versus Millennium. (And yes, many parallels can be drawn between NextGen versus DS9 and X-Files versus Millennium.)
H.Neervoort: What type or class are the new Klingon Battleships as shown in "All good things.." (TNG) and "Way of the warrior" (DS9) ?
Phil: Unfortunately, I am way over time on this column this morning. I believe the class of the vessel is mentioned in "Way of the Warrior."
[Anonymous]: I know you're a music-oriented guy and I know you like Star Trek, so here goes. After a fruitless, extensive internet search, I couldn't find the answer to my question: What was the Berlioz song Picard was listening to in his ready room at the beginning of Star Trek: First Contact?
Phil: I haven't rented the movie yet and it's been too long since I saw it in the theater and I'm not sure I would recognize it even if I heard it! Anybody?
Murray Leeder: I distinctly remember an original series episode where Kirk corrects himself on the Stardate. He says "Captain's Log, Stardate XXXX.X, correct, X." Any idea which, anyone?
Phil: I can't recall that every happening but that doesn't mean it didn't!
Have a great weekend, everybody!
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Copyright 1997 by Phil Farrand. All rights reserved.