Star Trek

[Buster's Uncle]

I am NOT too obsessed with costuming - creatively, they actually should have been a lot bolder with outrageous clothes and strange hair, but they knew the audience would freak if they went too alien/futurey.

Right on about Voyager, though.  One of the villain races was fat space polluters.  That was their entire hook.

And, appallingly, they used those guys more than once.

[Rusty Edge]

I read those episodes. Thanks, guys.
Strangely, I remember the Original episodes, which I wasn't allowed to watch at the time, but saw as late night re-runs in the late 70's ( although I tended to doze ).
I watched Next Generation weekly, but don't remember that episode.

To quote myself "That makes more sense of the Universe".

[Buster's Uncle]

The alien in the TNG episode The Chase that Uno referred to was projection of a very long-dead humanoid, looking a bit like a bald Odo.

I would submit that with all the aliens that look exactly like Earth humans, it's unlikely that so much parallel evolution happened to look like each other so much more than the source race that claims to has seeded the galaxy, but then the Preservers may have been a separate group and Sargon's people really didn't have noses.  We know the Preservers were active as recently as a thousand years or so ago, or the Native Americans they transplanted would have had time to develop a culture and style of dress not so recognizably a generic Hollywood version of Native American.

Betcha the Preservers were behind all the parallel Earths, and are human themselves - best reason I can think of to take so much interest in humans.  Earth is probably not the original, you know...

[Unorthodox]

The alien in the TNG episode The Chase that Uno referred to was projection of a very long-dead humanoid, looking a bit like a bald Odo.

Same actress as the female evil odo, iirc. 

[Buster's Uncle]

It's unfortunate that they recycled actors as much as they did, but then ST used Dianna Muldar twice, and she was all wrong for Is There in Truth No Beauty?...

[Buster's Uncle]

Star Trek - Taking Control of Kirk

58 3x03 - Star Trek - TOS - The Paradise Syndrome Commentary - SciFi Channel Special Edition

(Start about 3 minutes in.)

Star Trek The Next Generation (The Chase 1993)

[Buster's Uncle]

I'm listening to that Paradise Syndrome vid while I work on various things, and at 19:40, Miramanee reveals that her people have historical memory of contact with "the Wise Ones."

The Wise Ones brought us here from far away.  They chose a medicine chief to keep the temple - and to use it when the sky darkens.

There's more on the Preservers towards the end of the episode after Spock gets zapped...

[Buster's Uncle]

Correction: if Spock got zapped and learned anything about the Preservers, it got cut out of the vid.  I don't have the entire series memorized.

Yet.

[Impaler]

If were defining a 'Creature of the week' show as something like Lost-in-Space (or Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, which would frequently reuse the same rubber suit used the week earlier on Lost-in-Space), then yes I would agree that TOS was not THAT shlock. 

I think yall are arguing over DEGREE of creature usage, the one-dimensionality of a 'MONSTER' type creature, and the CENTRALITY of the weeks creature to the plot.  In the full out Lost-in-Space level show the Creature is not any kind of allegory, it's just a Monster or some kind of whimsical creature that needs to be dealt with, dealing with it is the whole of the plot.  TOS never had a creature that flat and simplistic, even the Gorn were an allegory.

[Buster's Uncle]

Yes.

...

Related to what I said earlier, has anyone realized the implication of Miramanee's people thinking "Kiroc" was a god because he was a stranger who came from the "temple"?

Consider the following observations:

Mirmanee said they had been brought there from far away - the Preservers didn't just knock them out and they woke up in a strange land with a strange night sky - they were told something.

No actual description of the "Wise ones" - but nothing about them being extra-mysterious or hidden, either.

I already said why I think they're advanced humans, noting that there's unmodified humans all over the place - most of them looking European-descended, BTW.

The People don't seem to have developed much of a religion around the Preservers.  Spock thought he recognized three tribes the population was probably derived from, looking across the lake.  -Again, evidence of recent transplantation.  I think it was only 400 years ago, maybe as little as 300, roughly when European diseases started decimating native populations all over North America before most of them even heard of white people.  There may have also been a cultural preservation motive in the mix.

Kirk is white.

In The Omega Glory, a parallel Earth (didn't look like Earth from orbit, like Miri's planet) with an America w/ identical-looking constitution and Asian communists who fought a biological WWIII, one Komm's father was alleged to be over 1,000.  If true, this means the paraAmerica with that We The People constitution was 800 years, minimum, ahead of Earth...  !!!

You'd think that even if you set up parallel societies, you'd want to check back in on them from time to time, whatever the reason for setting them up.  Long-term projects, though not as long-term as terraforming.  Note Miri's planet, and that there are an INSANE number of really hospitable Class M planets around that look exactly like Northern California ranches.  And whoever made the Shore Leave planet made the Keeper looking like a tall old white Human.

Naturally, when Miramnee's people saw the white man come from the temple, they called him a god, because they meant Preserver.



My conclusion?  The Preservers aren't only human, they're so recently active that they're probably still around, and may be a known race concealing their sophistication and power.  Miramanee's people met some of them, and found them pale, but not so strange as to have appearances worthy of mention in her brief account.  They may be well on their way to evolving to the Organian/Metron stage, or not.  (Sargon's people had gotten part of the way...)  Probably Gary Seven's backers, too...

Earth is one of the Preservers' experiments/projects.

[Impaler]

I don't think we can really fit any of the numerous "Earth equivalent" episodes of TOS into any kind of logical canon, they are fun episodes sure, but they simply were not written with any sense of continuity or coherence with the wider 'Federation/Alpha Quadrant' history, in TOS only the recurrent races like Klingons, Vulcans and Romulans were written with an eye towards canon.

The episodes with an Earth equivalents for example that planet full of Romans, or the one converted to Nazism would today be written with Time-travel as  the premise of finding another Earth will not pause the giggle test on a modern Sci-fi audience.  Even TOS learned this lesson and started to produce much more enduring episodes like COEF.

In contrast every TNG rubber forehead alien got at-least a little continuity consideration, generally their own planet/culture/language that might have 'interesting parallels' to Earth history to make for unsubtle allegories, but wasn't a blatant copy.

[Buster's Uncle]

Very different budgets is the bottom line for the difference - but why spoil the fun with reality? 

I think my hypothesis holds together really well...  Not as well as my Theory of ST Artificial Gravity last year, but nothing does.

[Lorizael]

I've got a theory about the Prime Directive. A lot of people complain that it basically makes the Federation into moral cowards, but there's a way to interpret it (and a few other things) that makes the Federation come off quite well.

[Buster's Uncle]

I think I know where you're going with this, but I'd like to hear your version.  Give.

...

The TNG episode where the little girl on a dying planet contacted Data WAS moral cowardice.  Picard decided WRONG.  The Prime Directive is for the protection of primitive less technologically sophisticated peoples, and when THEY. ARE. ALL. GOING. TO. DIE., simply doesn't apply.  Kirk would have saved them, not least because he had better writers.

[Rusty Edge]

Well, perhaps The Prime Directive was because of the time Dr. McCoy jumped into the time vortex and saved the life of Joan Collins, with dire consequences.