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Opinions on Captain Shon
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As the vast majority of you know by now, Captain Shon is occupying the center seat of the new Enterprise F. As depicted in the finale of "Boldly They Rode" (apologies for any spoilers, but I did decide to give a few days leadway before posting this to let others play through). Now, as the title sugests, what do we make of that?
I personally love the guy. It's great to finally see a non-human Captain in that chair. (Note, yes I know, Data of the Enterprise E is not human either. The key word there was "see", as Data has as yet not been actually depicted visually as the Captain of the Ent E. Before any STO canon buffs start nomming on my face like Hannibal Lecter. :rolleyes: ) The latest STOked episode mentioned that many folks were "underwhelmed" by him, which I see little reason for. Sure, the guy is a relative unknown as of right now (which I suspect and hope will change), but he did only sacrifice the USS Belfast and nearly the lives of he and his crew as well for your characters direct benefit. What else could you really want?
I personally love the guy. It's great to finally see a non-human Captain in that chair. (Note, yes I know, Data of the Enterprise E is not human either. The key word there was "see", as Data has as yet not been actually depicted visually as the Captain of the Ent E. Before any STO canon buffs start nomming on my face like Hannibal Lecter. :rolleyes: ) The latest STOked episode mentioned that many folks were "underwhelmed" by him, which I see little reason for. Sure, the guy is a relative unknown as of right now (which I suspect and hope will change), but he did only sacrifice the USS Belfast and nearly the lives of he and his crew as well for your characters direct benefit. What else could you really want?
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Actually you COULD see Data in the Ent-E command in that retardet "Countdown" comic wich is the "prequel" to the even more retardet Abrahams movie.
But about Captain Shon... well looking on his attitude during the negotiations in the frist 2800 episode, he is an Idiot.
And well seeing that he uses singel beams and Photons on a Defaint only adds to that impression
Thats makes him a perfect Captain for an idiotic ship like the Odysee class intead of wasting space on a good old Defaint-class^^
/rant
Well we JUST met the guy, lol! Lets look at what we've seen of him so far...
1. We helped his battle-battered crew make repairs to their vessel on DS9. Which as I recall, he graciously thanked us for afterward.
2. Sat across the table from him in an ill fated conference. Where, lets face it, the Feds were kind of surrounded by those unwilling to assist them... Or in the case of the Defera, assist themselves. Bunch of fishy weirdos.
3. As mentioned previously, watched him sacrifice ship and a potentially crew as well on our behalf.
4. Then witnessed him nearly do so again in the final fight to rid DS9 of the Dominion threat.
None of this speaks strength of character to anyone? No? Really?
Could've been worse. It could've been Captain Kurland lol. Who I'm sorry is more than kind of a weiner. I'm more than willing to elaborate on that too, should anyone ask lol.
Also, I would have preferred a Human Captain of the Enterprise.
Add to that that he is poorly written, and is easily predictable (I knew he would freely take second seat, the second I learned he would be in command).
He was still pretty cool back then even if he didn't know how to use the skill tree.
By the time the T5 Defiant came around, and Shon hopped on that bad boy just for the cloak, he was really coming into his own as a captain.
So I dig the old chap. I think he's a great choice for the Enterprise F, the STO equivalent of the Enterprise C and/or B. You know, the ship that carries the name, but the exploits are shrouded in mystery and ignored by canon.
What he has in commun with the great Shran is blue skin and antennas. Thats it.
As to Shon as person. Yeah... well...
I hope to see a few missions in the future which adds a bit of detail to him. Righ now, I like hes probably somebody to depend upon and takes action when needed.
As an introduction for the character, I don't think his portrayal was all that great in "The 2800". Hopefully, that will change in the future.
TBH, cryptic didnt do a very good job in introducing ANY outstanding and likable characters yet.
ALL recuring characters, Quinn, J'empok, Kurland, Sulu jr. .... are boring and unlikable.
Shon just adds to that.
Were he a DOFF, he's the guy you'd send on Marauding Assignments...not Diplomatic.
No. I just send people wich are either competent or expendable on marauding assignments.
Oh wait... you are right... hey prety expendable. I'd send him^^
How so? He's very combat ready like most of Starfleet in STO.
"You have the point, Captain. I'll stand behind you...waaay behind you... in my big new shiny top-of-the-line ship and back you up. Have fun storming the castle!" :eek:
Gosh golly gee, thanks a lot, Captain Jerk. (:mad: growl) Lord knows, we don't want you to scratch the chrome on your new bumpers. :rolleyes:
"Unfortunately most of the infantry think you're a prat. Ask them who they'd rather meet, Squadron Commander Flasheart or the man who cleans out the public toilets in Aberdeen, and they'd go for Wee Jock Poo-Pong McPlop every time." - Captain Blackadder
I would agree, with one exception: Admiral T'nae. Both the characterization and the voice work make her an interesting character to work with. Heck, I'd like to see more of T'nae in STO's future episodes.
Lets go over the encounters with him.
1, He can't maintain his own ship, let alone his crew, so he begs you to fix it for him and then babysit his crew so they don't get into trouble.
2, Which moron thought it was a good idea to send him to the Borg Summit? You have to remind him of what the Federation and Star Fleet stand for as he basically sits there and tells everybody that Star Fleet doesn't want to help, even though Star Fleet orchestrated the summit. And considering that you already have an Admiral there, Kurland and then yourself, he's completely surplus to requirements. I did the 2800 on my Lt Cmdr yesterday and took great please in a lower ranking officer basically telling to stfu.
3, He "rides to the rescue" after you depart Facility 4028. In other words, he turns up distracts them by getting the TRIBBLE blown out of his ship so you can escape 2 seconds later only to have his ship blown up. That is not a good tactic.
Adding all that together, how on earth does this man seem a good canditate for the captincy of the Enterprise?
But to be honest, can we blame all of this on Shon as a character? No, the blame for the sheer underwhelming feelings of Shon lies with Cryptic. The overall storyline of The 2800 has been fun, but they seriously need to hire some proper writers if they want to do storied events and create characters we can like and relate to.
He's a guy I barely know, in a ship I've hardly any incentive to care about what happens to, as a coincedence, share a name with three such vessels that I do (NX-Enterprise, NCC-1701, and NCC-1701 D).
Hopefully Cryptic can do something to change that a little, but as it stands... He's just another face in the crowd.
Captain Thelin might have been a better choice. We've encountered him a couple of times - he helped save me, I helped save him - but then that would require some timeline adjustments, so it's probably better to have an entirely new character. And since I probably won't encounter Shon for another year it really doesn't matter anyway.
Shon is an ideal example of a worthless character, we save the galaxy several times, I believe we outrank him, he displays no ability in command as we have to repair his ship. He displays no ability in combat and looses his own ship yet at the end of the day he is rewarded with the new Enterprise and our characters who worked to resolve the situations are pushed aside.
Is it any wonder people are not keen on his character, he was obviously not written with the player character in mind, if he was he would have more endearing qualities and display competence in judgement and combat.
I believe that is one of the main problems with Star Trek Online story telling, they push a character on us expecting us to like him without proving their worth first.
A great example in another game I play. Where a ranger character was suddenly introduced and asked the player to do a lot of things for him and at the end of the very long quest line, he gets the fame and the girl, while the players character is brushed aside. The game developers realised this error and later gave the opportunity for players to see another side to him, by showing his worth in combat, his resolve, ideals and why he is just such an awesome guy. Everyone immediately came around and liked him after that.
Shon and other pivotal STO characters need that treatment, give us a reason to like them, show us why they are worthy of commands greater than ours.
In the case of the Enterprise this is going to be very hard from a storytelling point of view.
In this thread I've seen people apparently wanting the Enterprise to make a grand entrance, yet there's at least one more (probably several more) threads that indicate that people felt cheated by the Enterprise showing up and that it was "the hero" (I disagree, but that's neither here nor there). The Enterprise is too iconic to use very often - unlike a lot of vessels you can't just keep on showing it winding up in trouble without diminishing it eventually. Doubly so since the player is arguably "the hero." Most other ships, most probably don't really care about, but I imagine that after we've saved the Enterprise for the fifth time, people will be wondering why they let the thing out of dry dock in the first place.
That name just has too much psychological power attached to it to use easily, even without CBS' involvement.
That's odd. I ran the whole FE on a new KDF character last night in an Orion FDC and the final battle in 'Boldly they rode' was brutal for that ship; I couldn't clear all the tractors I was receiving, I couldn't heal past all the CPB and the TBR the Jem'Hadar were using was destroying all my Fighters in one pass (and tearing up my hull) so the arrival of the Enterprise was welcome, along with the NPC Defiant it was tearing up the jem'Hadar NPCs and whilst I was clearing the attack ships it cleared three of the battleships and had got the Dreadnought down to 50%.
As for Shon, I liked him but I do like Andorian's anyway so I'm very biased. It's nice to see a non Human flagship captain for once, especially to see an Andorian in the centre seat. I didn't really like him in the first episode but the emotes they used for him made him look like he'd drunk a little too much Red Bull, the later cutscenes and particularly the final cutscene in Facility 4028 (I can't remember the exact number) were much more natural looking and seeing him on the bridge giving orders was a nice touch.
However, some more tension in that cutscene would have gone a long way to highlighting what he was doing; it took me a couple of runs through to realise he was sacrificing the Belfast to ensure the Founder's survival which seems to be why he got the Enterprise command.
It's part of the reason why going to VA Rank makes no sense. At VA I should be in charge of taskforces and planning the assault to take back DS9. The game really needs to cap us out at Captain.
A) Read Countdown to SEE Data as Captain of the Ent-E in STO uniforms.
I will pray everyday in the hopes that one day Shon meets a horrible and slow death. The Enterprise should have gotten better, but Cryptic had to nerf it with a horrid captain that couldn't even fight a small fleet off Dominion ships on multiple occasions.
Apart from that, well, he is a bit pompous, I mean, look at his gestures all the time. Apart from that, he's a good and courageous officer.
Nevertheless there are a few things which sadly negate the whole evolution of the saga.
1. Very bad implementation and introduction
We were told that the FE would introduce the crew of the new Enterprise and the ship itself. We poorly got both delivered on the very last 5 minutes of the final mission. That's it. A cutscene and out.
I know that the drydock launch mission had more immersion and epicness of the Odyssey class line than the cheap pop in cutscene of the Enterprise in "boldy they rode".
Instead of wasting a whole week mission "Of Bajor" for example letting us do Ensign runaround work, we should have gotten a mission to interact with the Enterprise and socialize with the new flagship. It would have been a ton more social RP than the trying to scan plants on a town on Bajor....
2. Lack of Story telling
Second point is that STO lacks tremendously of storytelling and RP character in missions and characters. The only person I would say introduced very well was Admiral T'nae, Franklin Drake and Obisek. Other than that there is absolutely no single remarkable and noticable character in the whole game. It is and has been a "quick surface production". So is Captain Shon. This is sad, but I miss deep character involments like in other MMORPGs. Characters you do not forget after the mission and who are recurring.
Where are the stories and development of:
The Undine?
The Borg?
The Klingons?
The Romulan struggle?
The Iconians?
Always only little very very thin and vague hints. Nothing more.
3. Soft canon
STO is as canon as any Star Trek book out there. This includes characters, ships, enemies and any events like the Borg incursion and the pseudo Klingon-Fed War. So I don't even bother anymore what I get to see story wise. They could bring in a short story with Borg instantly decide to paint their ships pink and I wouldn't mind lol.