Who I would cast if I actually wanted a good show:
...
Chakotay (ethnic Sioux): Russel Means.
Fantastic choice, though Russel at 75 years of age is a bit long-in-the-tooth for the role. I'd consider Eric Schweig (an Inuit), who played Uncas alongside Russel on The Last of the Mohicans. I'd actually considered Eric for years for the lead role of the Native American survivor should Louis L'amour's "Last of the Breed" ever be filmed (and it should, it really should).
I can see Chakotay's ethnicity as a necessity, given the character's story, but is Tuvok's ethnicity a necessity? I don't recall it ever being a plot point or back story. If so, there are a lot of other great actors to fill the role, and I'm not even considering Caucasian when I say that. (Not that I'm rejecting it either. I'm just open to the possibilities.)
For Tuvok, you need someone who can spout Treknobabble, and who can manage to pack an entire emotional reaction into an eyebrow lift like the late Mr. Nimoy. I'm not that avid a TV or movie watcher, so I don't know who could necessarily do that in the current crop of actors. Tim Russ was pretty good at it, though.
For Chakotay, since they never could decide which nation he was supposed to be from (seemed to vary from Sioux to Navajo to possibly some Inca or Aztec remnant), I think Graham Green could do a credible job. He's played Sioux before, in Dances With Wolves (where he was, IMO, one of the few tolerable things about the entire production).
For Tuvok, you need someone who can spout Treknobabble, and who can manage to pack an entire emotional reaction into an eyebrow lift like the late Mr. Nimoy. I'm not that avid a TV or movie watcher, so I don't know who could necessarily do that in the current crop of actors. Tim Russ was pretty good at it, though.
For Chakotay, since they never could decide which nation he was supposed to be from (seemed to vary from Sioux to Navajo to possibly some Inca or Aztec remnant), I think Graham Green could do a credible job. He's played Sioux before, in Dances With Wolves (where he was, IMO, one of the few tolerable things about the entire production).
Tim Russ is an excellent Vulcan. He could also become a Memetic Badass if put into the right situations and still pulling off the Vulcan calm; because that takes balls of titanium in the right settings.
Chakotay as-is could be played by a fake totem pole. Recasting him, I'd make him a Sioux, have him be still extremely angry at his people being screwed over and ****ed over and over by the US, and have him be played by a real Sioux actor. There are some pretty damn good ones, including at least one of the guys in Last of the Mohicans.
Fantastic choice, though Russel at 75 years of age is a bit long-in-the-tooth for the role. I'd consider Eric Schweig (an Inuit), who played Uncas alongside Russel on The Last of the Mohicans. I'd actually considered Eric for years for the lead role of the Native American survivor should Louis L'amour's "Last of the Breed" ever be filmed (and it should, it really should).
I can see Chakotay's ethnicity as a necessity, given the character's story, but is Tuvok's ethnicity a necessity? I don't recall it ever being a plot point or back story. If so, there are a lot of other great actors to fill the role, and I'm not even considering Caucasian when I say that. (Not that I'm rejecting it either. I'm just open to the possibilities.)
Fine, but it has to be a Native American playing his own nation, or at least a very closely related nation, and ALL of the characterization has to be fair and accurate.
Tuvok isn't a black guy. He's a Vulcan from (region) with an ethnic background in the Vulcan region/clan/whatever of (x). Gotta remember that appearances of Human ethnicity don't apply to aliens.
Cannon is a large tube, open at one end and usually made of metal, that fires large projectiles over great distances.
Canon for Star Trek is what's happened in the movies and the TV shows (except "Threshold" - apparently, even the showrunners have disavowed that episode). What we want to do here is reboot some of the canon, because frankly it sucked more often than not.
Kinda depends on who you ask. I think the "generally accepted" canon (with one n) is everything that was put on screen. So the five live-action television shows, the animated series, and the 12 films.
Within that there are multiple alternate timelines that people debate over whether they have "happened" or not. I've heard people debate about whether the animated series should count, and also some people do have a habit of dismissing any installment they don't happen to like as "not canon."
The books, games, comics and anything else not on screen is generally accepted as "soft canon" meaning anyone else producing a licensed Star Trek work can choose to acknowledge them as having happened, or not.
ok "cannon" i should know from my seven years in the Army lol. so canon is everything thats out there on film and print. so just because we dont like a show or book or whatever dosent make it any less canon than anythig else.
Like I said, the only thing that's been officially stricken from the canon is "Threshold", an episode of VOY. Everything else, even "Spock's Brain" (TOS) and "The Naked Now" (TNG), is considered canon.
The '09 movie kind of separates canon; the part of the movie that tells about the Hobus event, the destruction of Romulus, and the Jellyfish and Nerada vanishing in an artificial singularity is canon in the regular, or Prime, timeline. Everything from the destruction of the Kelvin on is in the canon of an alternate timeline, one in which Starfleet is apparently run by people who make the Pakled look like Nobel laureates.
Chakotay as-is could be played by a fake totem pole. Recasting him, I'd make him a Sioux, have him be still extremely angry at his people being screwed over and ****ed over and over by the US, and have him be played by a real Sioux actor. There are some pretty damn good ones, including at least one of the guys in Last of the Mohicans.
Personally, I'd kinda prefer if they just dropped the Native American thing altogether. I haven't seen all of Voyager, but his native background never seemed important, and his religion was portrayed with typical Hollywood faux-mysticism. Maybe they could pull it off well, but I kinda doubt it.
I definitely wouldn't go with the anger--I don't think it would make sense to still be angry over events form 500 years before his birth, wrought by political entity that. It certainly wouldn't jive with his role on the show, which was to provide a calmer, no longer exists. Given his history as a Maquis, he certainly wouldn't have forgotten it, but anger seems a bit extrememoderating influence over Janeway.
Like I said, the only thing that's been officially stricken from the canon is "Threshold", an episode of VOY. Everything else, even "Spock's Brain" (TOS) and "The Naked Now" (TNG), is considered canon.
The '09 movie kind of separates canon; the part of the movie that tells about the Hobus event, the destruction of Romulus, and the Jellyfish and Nerada vanishing in an artificial singularity is canon in the regular, or Prime, timeline. Everything from the destruction of the Kelvin on is in the canon of an alternate timeline, one in which Starfleet is apparently run by people who make the Pakled look like Nobel laureates.
Oy! Pakleds are actually pretty smart despite their linguistic issues.
Now, if you'd said that JJTrek's SFC makes the Kazon look like Nobel laureates...that, I could buy.
One of these days I'm writing a fixit fic for that mess.
Oy! Pakleds are actually pretty smart despite their linguistic issues.
Now, if you'd said that JJTrek's SFC makes the Kazon look like Nobel laureates...that, I could buy.
One of these days I'm writing a fixit fic for that mess.
Remembering your hobbyhorses, I'm tempted to say that the JJverse Starfleet Command is owned and operated by the Talaxians...
Jon's Post, supplemental: Oh, wow, a moment of Fridge Brilliance. What if the difference is because the artificial singularity attracted the wrong sort of attention, and the JJverse SFC has already been infiltrated by Undine?
I wouldn't go that far. Voyager certainly wasn't Trek's finest. However, IMO Enterprise didn't do anything to help Trek either. That whole Temporal Cold War/Quantum Leap arc needed to go.
Yeah, apparently (judging from interviews) Rick Berman is fascinated by time travel, but not enough to think the implications through or come up with a coherent theory as to how it might work. Should've consulted any one of a number of professional SF authors, who have already thought about the issues involved and could have made the arc far more tolerable.
What'll really bake your noodle is when you consider that we find out the Temporal Cold War in the very first episode of Star Trek as far as the in-universe time is concerned, and the people fighting that war are from very far in the future after the last episode of Star Trek. Potentially, every event we have ever seen on Star Trek is part of the Temporal Cold War.
Remembering your hobbyhorses, I'm tempted to say that the JJverse Starfleet Command is owned and operated by the Talaxians...
Jon's Post, supplemental: Oh, wow, a moment of Fridge Brilliance. What if the difference is because the artificial singularity attracted the wrong sort of attention, and the JJverse SFC has already been infiltrated by Undine?
Hey, at least Neelix, abusive incompetent scumbag that he is, is genuinely trying. It's just that all of his examples are absolute pillocks.
...that is amazing fridge brilliance. But it relies on the rest of SF being morons, as well.
Then again, look how easily Khan ran rings around Kirk, LOL.
What'll really bake your noodle is when you consider that we find out the Temporal Cold War in the very first episode of Star Trek as far as the in-universe time is concerned, and the people fighting that war are from very far in the future after the last episode of Star Trek. Potentially, every event we have ever seen on Star Trek is part of the Temporal Cold War.
And then we get to the crazy part... It gives you a reason to have so many time travel things. Like the Tox Uthat...
Fine, but it has to be a Native American playing his own nation, or at least a very closely related nation, and ALL of the characterization has to be fair and accurate.
Not sure it has to be a related/close nation, so long as it is done respectfully, as you say "fair and accurate". George Takei, for example, did fine as Sulu, representing all of Asia, rather than just Japan. And Sulu represented a progressive viewpoint, that ancestral history was not nearly so important in the 23rd century as one's own actions.
But should I pick a tribe/nation, I'd vote Cherokee, as they were the "First Nation", as Canadians say, in my home region, and many friends, including two of my closest, have Cherokee ancestry. The Cherokee had an amazing culture and a tragic history, if a show writer must dredge up the past.
Oy! Pakleds are actually pretty smart despite their linguistic issues.
I'm splitting hairs here, I realize, but I tend to see Pakleds as "cunning" over "smart". I've known a few humans like that, too. Cunning enough to pull off some pretty crafty schemes, not smart enough to stay off the radar, or ahead of the law.
uh no "Make you crazy" is what it means in this context.
I think I got it from The Matrix.
That is correct, and you probably did get it from The Matrix, because it's slang dating back to at least the 1940s. Today we'd say "blow your mind", more typically.
A "hobbyhorse" is a pet idea that someone sticks with and argues about whenever they can; the term derives from an older word for a rocking horse, and has the connotation of great effort given to doing something that ultimately goes nowhere. (Worffan hates Neelix, and by extension all Talaxians, even though the depiction of the species in VOY makes absolutely no evolutionary sense if he's supposed to be representative - any race that silly, easily distracted, and poor at engineering is unlikely to even reach the top of their planet's food chain, much less reach for the stars - and thus cannot be taken seriously by a devout SF fan like myself. I have to believe that Neelix is one of those individuals who've survived by sheer dumb luck, emphasis on the "dumb", and the ones we see in-game are a particularly dispirited group of refugees, not indicative of their peoples' potential at all.)
That is correct, and you probably did get it from The Matrix, because it's slang dating back to at least the 1940s. Today we'd say "blow your mind", more typically.
A "hobbyhorse" is a pet idea that someone sticks with and argues about whenever they can; the term derives from an older word for a rocking horse, and has the connotation of great effort given to doing something that ultimately goes nowhere. (Worffan hates Neelix, and by extension all Talaxians, even though the depiction of the species in VOY makes absolutely no evolutionary sense if he's supposed to be representative - any race that silly, easily distracted, and poor at engineering is unlikely to even reach the top of their planet's food chain, much less reach for the stars - and thus cannot be taken seriously by a devout SF fan like myself. I have to believe that Neelix is one of those individuals who've survived by sheer dumb luck, emphasis on the "dumb", and the ones we see in-game are a particularly dispirited group of refugees, not indicative of their peoples' potential at all.)
Is there anything wrong with hating Neelix? He's an arrogant, abusive jerk who treats his girlfriend like TRIBBLE and gets multiple people killed directly through his own incompetence.
And don't forget that Voyager also gave us the Kazon, who successfully self-terminated while plugging in a replicator, and the Ocampa, whose biology AT BEST means that they will die out in about half a century.
And that's not even accounting for lizard babies.
tl;dr: My problems with Neelix are a symptom of my deeper issues with VOY in general.
What'll really bake your noodle is when you consider that we find out the Temporal Cold War in the very first episode of Star Trek as far as the in-universe time is concerned, and the people fighting that war are from very far in the future after the last episode of Star Trek. Potentially, every event we have ever seen on Star Trek is part of the Temporal Cold War.
I'm getting time travel vibes from this next season, given the fact that Voyager is mucking around in Krenim space in Dust to Dust.
Comments
Fantastic choice, though Russel at 75 years of age is a bit long-in-the-tooth for the role. I'd consider Eric Schweig (an Inuit), who played Uncas alongside Russel on The Last of the Mohicans. I'd actually considered Eric for years for the lead role of the Native American survivor should Louis L'amour's "Last of the Breed" ever be filmed (and it should, it really should).
I can see Chakotay's ethnicity as a necessity, given the character's story, but is Tuvok's ethnicity a necessity? I don't recall it ever being a plot point or back story. If so, there are a lot of other great actors to fill the role, and I'm not even considering Caucasian when I say that. (Not that I'm rejecting it either. I'm just open to the possibilities.)
For Chakotay, since they never could decide which nation he was supposed to be from (seemed to vary from Sioux to Navajo to possibly some Inca or Aztec remnant), I think Graham Green could do a credible job. He's played Sioux before, in Dances With Wolves (where he was, IMO, one of the few tolerable things about the entire production).
Tim Russ is an excellent Vulcan. He could also become a Memetic Badass if put into the right situations and still pulling off the Vulcan calm; because that takes balls of titanium in the right settings.
Chakotay as-is could be played by a fake totem pole. Recasting him, I'd make him a Sioux, have him be still extremely angry at his people being screwed over and ****ed over and over by the US, and have him be played by a real Sioux actor. There are some pretty damn good ones, including at least one of the guys in Last of the Mohicans.
Fine, but it has to be a Native American playing his own nation, or at least a very closely related nation, and ALL of the characterization has to be fair and accurate.
Tuvok isn't a black guy. He's a Vulcan from (region) with an ethnic background in the Vulcan region/clan/whatever of (x). Gotta remember that appearances of Human ethnicity don't apply to aliens.
I'd still cast Tim Russ.
Canon for Star Trek is what's happened in the movies and the TV shows (except "Threshold" - apparently, even the showrunners have disavowed that episode). What we want to do here is reboot some of the canon, because frankly it sucked more often than not.
Kinda depends on who you ask. I think the "generally accepted" canon (with one n) is everything that was put on screen. So the five live-action television shows, the animated series, and the 12 films.
Within that there are multiple alternate timelines that people debate over whether they have "happened" or not. I've heard people debate about whether the animated series should count, and also some people do have a habit of dismissing any installment they don't happen to like as "not canon."
The books, games, comics and anything else not on screen is generally accepted as "soft canon" meaning anyone else producing a licensed Star Trek work can choose to acknowledge them as having happened, or not.
The '09 movie kind of separates canon; the part of the movie that tells about the Hobus event, the destruction of Romulus, and the Jellyfish and Nerada vanishing in an artificial singularity is canon in the regular, or Prime, timeline. Everything from the destruction of the Kelvin on is in the canon of an alternate timeline, one in which Starfleet is apparently run by people who make the Pakled look like Nobel laureates.
I definitely wouldn't go with the anger--I don't think it would make sense to still be angry over events form 500 years before his birth, wrought by political entity that. It certainly wouldn't jive with his role on the show, which was to provide a calmer, no longer exists. Given his history as a Maquis, he certainly wouldn't have forgotten it, but anger seems a bit extrememoderating influence over Janeway.
Oy! Pakleds are actually pretty smart despite their linguistic issues.
Now, if you'd said that JJTrek's SFC makes the Kazon look like Nobel laureates...that, I could buy.
One of these days I'm writing a fixit fic for that mess.
Jon's Post, supplemental: Oh, wow, a moment of Fridge Brilliance. What if the difference is because the artificial singularity attracted the wrong sort of attention, and the JJverse SFC has already been infiltrated by Undine?
Hey, at least Neelix, abusive incompetent scumbag that he is, is genuinely trying. It's just that all of his examples are absolute pillocks.
...that is amazing fridge brilliance. But it relies on the rest of SF being morons, as well.
Then again, look how easily Khan ran rings around Kirk, LOL.
My character Tsin'xing
Not sure it has to be a related/close nation, so long as it is done respectfully, as you say "fair and accurate". George Takei, for example, did fine as Sulu, representing all of Asia, rather than just Japan. And Sulu represented a progressive viewpoint, that ancestral history was not nearly so important in the 23rd century as one's own actions.
But should I pick a tribe/nation, I'd vote Cherokee, as they were the "First Nation", as Canadians say, in my home region, and many friends, including two of my closest, have Cherokee ancestry. The Cherokee had an amazing culture and a tragic history, if a show writer must dredge up the past.
I'm splitting hairs here, I realize, but I tend to see Pakleds as "cunning" over "smart". I've known a few humans like that, too. Cunning enough to pull off some pretty crafty schemes, not smart enough to stay off the radar, or ahead of the law.
what does "Bake your noodle" mean and what is a hobbyhorse?
ah thanks. yes, that fits here.
I think I got it from The Matrix.
A "hobbyhorse" is a pet idea that someone sticks with and argues about whenever they can; the term derives from an older word for a rocking horse, and has the connotation of great effort given to doing something that ultimately goes nowhere. (Worffan hates Neelix, and by extension all Talaxians, even though the depiction of the species in VOY makes absolutely no evolutionary sense if he's supposed to be representative - any race that silly, easily distracted, and poor at engineering is unlikely to even reach the top of their planet's food chain, much less reach for the stars - and thus cannot be taken seriously by a devout SF fan like myself. I have to believe that Neelix is one of those individuals who've survived by sheer dumb luck, emphasis on the "dumb", and the ones we see in-game are a particularly dispirited group of refugees, not indicative of their peoples' potential at all.)
Is there anything wrong with hating Neelix? He's an arrogant, abusive jerk who treats his girlfriend like TRIBBLE and gets multiple people killed directly through his own incompetence.
And don't forget that Voyager also gave us the Kazon, who successfully self-terminated while plugging in a replicator, and the Ocampa, whose biology AT BEST means that they will die out in about half a century.
And that's not even accounting for lizard babies.
tl;dr: My problems with Neelix are a symptom of my deeper issues with VOY in general.