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Dr Martha Jones Smith? Really? Seriously?
zenzenarimasen
Member Posts: 181 Arc User
I unlocked a temporal lock box. Inside was a time traveling DOFF. I used it to unlock the DOFF. Out popped a purple quality DOFF named Martha Jones Smith, who happens to be a doctor, of african descent, and of course female.
Seriously Cryptic? I probably find it as hilarious as you but, did you have to be that blatant about it?
Before anybody thinks I'm going off about minorities in the medical profession, here's a link to explain to anybody who doesn't watch Doctor Who. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Jones
The icon for Martha Jones Smith even looks like she has the same hairstyle as in the wikipedia article for the Doctor Who character.
Seriously Cryptic? I probably find it as hilarious as you but, did you have to be that blatant about it?
Before anybody thinks I'm going off about minorities in the medical profession, here's a link to explain to anybody who doesn't watch Doctor Who. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Jones
The icon for Martha Jones Smith even looks like she has the same hairstyle as in the wikipedia article for the Doctor Who character.
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You didn't see those coming a mile away?
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At least you got a Purple one. My crit success landed me a Blue
Has absolutely nothing to do with it being an online sci-fi game.
STO is far, far from the first Star Trek game or even online Star Trek game (e.g., SFC II Dynaverse, STCCG Online). Star Trek games and media in general have pretty consistently avoided crossovers because such are inherently contrary to the internal consistency of the franchise. In fact I can recall no example of a crossover before.
Conversely, crossovers and pop culture references are universal in modern MMOs. It is a really bad fad that has caught on with insipid developers. Go play WoW's MoP. Everything in that bloody game is a pop culture reference. In fact, in the previous tier of fivemans the devs made nearly every line of dialogue a Star Wars quote. Apparently they thought this was somehow more clever or engaging than hiring competent copywriters. Same with GW2, pop culture references and lifted names and quotes abound. (Some of them, such as naming a character after a Russian band whose name ends in Riot, are in extremely bad taste and have definitely contributed to the mediocre reception of the game).
PWE and Cryptic have shown they don't understand Star Trek lore or franchise culture. That's not to say that they don't know who Sela's mother was, or whatever, but rather that they don't understand the cadence, or dynamics, of Star Trek lore that transcend individual questions. Example: how areas in the universe are unimaginatively named after ship classes (in the lore, names and places are invariably unique and distinct), or the curious choice to name recent doffs Elim Ziyal, N'Vek and Ro Taban (even though the former is a Cardassian named by Bajoran idiom, the second is established as dead in the lore, and the lattermost makes absolutely no sense).
Introducing pop culture references to the Star Trek universe is just another outgrowth of that lack of comprehension of the Star Trek franchise culture.
The constant is not Star Trek or sci-fi or this being an online game. This is a contemporary fad, a really bad one, that grows out of a lack of imagination and 'intellectual inbreeding' amongst devs. To argue otherwise is disingenuous and originates from the standpoint that 'the franchise I work for is the only franchise'.
Indeed. Isn't it required?
The objective evidence is that trite crossovers are not required. Because Star Trek games, online or otherwise, have never featured crossovers. It is a contemporary fad and the common elements are none of the things the rep cited.
As was fully established by the previous post you did not reply to.
As long as it's not too intrusive or immersion-breaking, it's all in the spirit of what's been done before.
Conjoined, Re-emergence, and . . .
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Naming a ship after a fictional person, place or thing (e.g., characters from Shakespeare, or historical or fictional personages or ships) does not break the internal consistency of the Star Trek universe because those references mean the same thing to the protagonists that they do to us.
A name reference is not comparable to interacting with a fiction given life and integrated seamlessly into the universe because the fictional nature of the reference remains constant between reality and the lore.
Your latter example is dubious in the extreme. Mulder and Scully were FBI agents. FBI agents are real. The UFP models many of its institutions on those of former governments, just as our own government models its institutions on those of governments that came before ours. For example, Dexter Remmick carried himself in the stereotyped manner of a contemporary G-man, just as Lucsly and Dulmer did - and he was no more a reference to a show that did not yet exist than they.
Even if Lucsly and Dulmer were such a reference, their appearance does not violate internal consistency because they are discrete characters, rather than crossovers. They exist wholly within the Star Trek universe.
Star Trek simply does not do crossovers. These doffs are singular in that respect. It looks like you are grasping at some pretty fine straws to justify a viewpoint that doesn't stand impartial examination.
With the exception of Star Fleet Command II: Empires at War and Star Fleet Command: Orion Pirates. Both of those games had the Kzinti in them. The Kzinti are a crossover from Larry Niven's Known Space series. However, i think they were renamed from Kzinti to Mirak for SFC:Orion Pirates.
Finding the Kzinti in a Star Trek game shouldn't be surprising, however, since The Animated Series already featured them in the episode "The Slaver Weapon." The episode in question was actually written by Larry Niven and adapted from one of his short stories. Sulu played the role of Louis Wu in the original short story, with Uhura being Teela Brown, and Spock being Nessus. Also rumor has it that season 4 of Enterprise was slated to have a Kzinti episode, but the series was canceled.
Also STO has the Kzinti. Under a different name (same account, I haven't bothered with reclaiming my old name since the PWE takeover), I spearheaded a campaign to get the devs to add the Kzinti to the game. They had them announced for Season 2 I think. I can only guess that Larry Niven wouldn't play ball because when they were finally added to STO recently, their name was changed to Ferasan. The colors for the Kzinti are supposed to be like that of normal Earth cats, rather than blue. But that's a minor nitpick, at least they're telepaths like in Known Space and the above crossovers.
However, for the most part, absolutely right, crossovers are ALMOST unheard of.
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There has never been a case in Star Trek of introducing characters from entirely discrete works and having them be seamlessly accepted by the other characters, like introducing an ant to a termite colony.
The reason that this was done in STO is clear as day to anyone who has played other MMOs lately. Pop culture references and crossovers are a mania amongst contemporary devs, who in all MMOs implement a lot of really bad ideas for seemingly no other reason than all the other devs are doing it.
This is mutually true of devs at Anet, Blizzard and Cryptic.
When I imagine what the inside of Cryptic Studios must look like, I envision Star Wars posters everywhere.
This was content related to time travel... I would have been more upset with Cryptic if they hadn t included at least 1 Doctor Who reference... and I hope there are more... I find this sort of stuff cool and fun.
There have been plenty of references like this in Star Trek... the games may not have had it... but the movie and shows have...
(heck an ILM guy put a CG Millenium Falcon in First Contact... and R2D2 was in the Abrams movie...)
Lets stop complaining that Cryptic doesnt get it and move on.
Yeah but there's a difference between something subtle that's only on the screen for a brief moment and is hardly even noticable and having the following image being visible in your dossier without having to slow everything down frame by frame.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/17771862/marthajonesmith.jpg
And apparently she's blue, not purple. Odd, she was purple when I got her... Bug maybe?
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Not really... they are both still there... plus do you really look at your DOff names after you get them? Or just look at their traits and see if they work for the mission.
Im proud of Cryptic... this was a requirement for temporal related content. I hope there is more. Id gladly take a bunch of references, because I like games that do that, and I like developers that can not take themselves too seriously and have fun with their game.
Where are these requirements written down? And which entity decides what the requirements are? I can conceive of them doing time travel without a Doctor Who reference. They obviously did it without Doc Brown, Bill & Ted, Voyagers , Time Tunnel, or any number of other time travel references, so I can conceive of them being able to do without Doctor Who too. So if it's a requirement, it's obviously one dictated by fiat, rather than being a real requirement.
And yes, I look at the names. Got a problem with that?
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Then dismiss her and be done with it. I liked the referense, I'm enjoying all the nods that were put in with the new box. The nods to older ST episodes and the nods to other Sci-Fi series'.
I'm just miffed that the devs are either unoriginal or unfamiliar with the Star Trek franchise enough to let it stand on its own without doing pop culture references. I don't mind subtle references, but not ones as overt as this... It's about at blunt as if 11 showed up on the bridge of the enterprise, stole a TNG uniform, and said "I like spandex. Spandex is cool now."
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Martha Jones isn't a very obvious reference. It's a very.... normal human name. Conspicuously so in fact.
My character Tsin'xing
We dont really know what other Doffs there are, I honestly wouldnt be surprised if there was a Doc Brown DOFF or some sort of Bill and Ted reference (and I dont need to point out that Bill and Ted's excellent adventure was pretty much a Doctor Who reference, do I?). But the fact that Doctor Who has been around since 1963 with over 750 episodes, its one of the more influential sic-fie shoes to deal with time travel.
I dont really have a problem with you looking at the names... no. I just dont see the point after the original reading of them All I care about after getting them is their traits for missions.
My character Tsin'xing
I just assumed that the game designers were stick-in-the-muds.
These references seem a little blatant to me. (For example"Verne Brown" -- the actual name of Doc Brown's son in Back to the Future III -- comments on his father's tendency to shout "Great Scott!" in his bio quote.)
But TNG itself was chock full of references to Buckeroo Banzai, Dr. Who, Star Wars, The Prisoner, Asimov, etc. There are tombstones visible in TNG for George McFly and Darth Vader.
The question I'd raise here is the level of subtlety, which reminds me of reading Cracked magazine as a kid. (Not the site. The site's great.)
It's like: having some character who is half-Klingon elected Federation president, vowing to reach out to Klingons while also doubling down on drone strikes against hostile Klingon forces. That could be a reference to Obama, right? And is consistent with things in Trek like the George W. Bush/Archer parallels.
But it wouldn't be a gag or a clever reference to have a duty officer named Barack H. Obama and then say, "But the president doesn't use his middle initial! It's a reference! Get it? Our character is a nod!" There's a line between a nod and a full on head thump through a glass table.
Looking at gaming, there are Pokemon that are references to things in culture and mythology. But if they introduced Mega Man-achu, there are issues with that. (At least go for Mega Manatee!)
Actually, they did do a Doc Brown reference. I haven't caught a Bill and Ted reference but I'm still trying to place the bartender with the last name Zombie, which I'm sure is a time travel reference.
BTW, the tombstones were in Sub Rosa.
My character Tsin'xing
This neatly summarizes the entire issue. Very neatly. This issue is an aspect of a wider trend.
The actual Star Trek producers like jamming pop culture references into actual Star Trek. I think what Cryptic is doing here is trying to be playful like that.
I just think something like "John Warrant" is a better play on "James Bond" than something like "James Connery Bond Jr."
Haven't seen that one yet, post a screenie and somone on this forum will figure it out!