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Temporal Cold War: Good Idea or Bad Idea?
drakomagi
Member Posts: 124 Arc User
What's your take on the direction the storyline is advancing? The Temporal Cold War first formally introduced in Enterprise, but with events scattered throughout Star Trek history.
Temporal Cold War: Good Idea or Bad Idea? 161 votes
Good idea
25%
41 votes
Bad idea
27%
45 votes
See how they run with it
41%
67 votes
Doesn't matter to me
4%
8 votes
0
Comments
The Temporal Cold War arc had a lot of promise in Enterprise, but the story kinda got away from the writers and got muddied up a bit with the whole Sphere Builder/Xindi arc. Yes, both the Temporal Cold War and the Sphere Builder/Xindi arcs are linked, but the linkage wasn't made too clear in the show and it left a lot of plot holes as a result. I look forward to what Cryptic is planning with regards to the Temporal Cold War, and from what I've seen so far they're moving in a very interesting direction that is very true to the philosophies of the Star Trek universe.
if I stop posting it doesn't make you right it. just means I don't have enough rum to continue interacting with you.
This sums it up quite nicely. Time travel done right and you have things like Dr. Who, which has been one of the longest running television series. Time travel done bad, and you have things like JJ Trek. The problem people have with time travel, is that there's more examples of things like JJ Trek where it's just used as a bad plot device to reset timelines so that writers can start over stories. And those are entirely valid concerns. But I don't think that a temporal cold war arc would be like that. In fact, as temporal agents, that would be the kind of thing we would be trying to prevent.
Support 90 degree arc limitation on BFaW! Save our ships from looking like flying disco balls of dumb!
The entire arc was terrible and bringing it back was an even worse one. Kudos to Manny Coto for booting it out of the timeline entirely first thing in season 4. Which reminds me: how the hell is it happening at all since, as previously mentioned, it was reverted out of existence?
Seems to me Craptic thought it through about as well as Berman and Braga did.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
I still get flustered when I try to work it out in my head, but just think of it as some weird love-child of the ontological, predestination, and grandfather paradoxes. It doesn't make sense, but it does, but it also kinda doesn't, yet it makes some sense if you know what I mean?
Yeah, TRIBBLE that. Again I say, the hell with this godawful story arc, especially the part where they retconned the Cardassians out of their own arc so they could wedge the mirror universe into it.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
This. Time travel makes for interesting, occasional stages for interesting single episodes that make a point. ENT in it's entirety was awfull and everything they wrote for it is awfull and the "temporal cold war" especially is terrible, retcon fireworks because they realized the show cannot stand on it's own and they pulled classic Trek works into the void with them.
I think it is literally the worst possible plot point Cryptic could have chosen, even worse than the ongoing Iconian phantom. I wish we'd see more classic approaches at one point and don't have them be forced tv-show recognition all the time. Just because you have a Star Trek game doen't mean you have to tackle every single line of plot that was ever seen in the shows. It just screws things up. Do something original which respects established lore/rules and styles and we're fine. The Deferi arc was nice. Do something with your own original creations and make them a fitting part in the Star Trek mosaic.
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Read the first DTI novel. It specifically addresses all of the Time Travel shenanigans in Trek and manages to make complete sense of them. Elegantly to boot.
It's pretty much this hard to keep just one timeline intact. ♪
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Among these things is the storyline and how factions work. Instead of being automatically opposed, players are instead Temporal Agents who can choose to assist with various branches of the Temporal Agency. They share vendors and hubs, with the only significant difference being how they carry out various missions. The methods use to complete goals in the mission increases reputation with a department within the Temporal Agency.
To my mind, the usage of a time-hopping society could be useful for excusing a wide variety of player-convenience features, such as eliminating Sector Space and the Transwarp system as main methods for accessing missions and hubs. Instead, the player hops directly to the appropriate time and space.
Further, this would be a good opportunity to remove the mechanical function of race and to make it so that ship appearance did not correlate to its ability. Basically, the player can alter the appearance of the timeship and their character at will, without affecting performance. With gameplay and aesthetics separate, the developers can improve both aspects without having to take the other into consideration.
Because I have an opinion differing from yours we had no Star Trek on TV for ten years?
I might misinterpret what you are saying, but it reads to me that "true" fans will always eat up everything that gets the label/license and they better love it because otherwise there wouldn't be a new show?
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Classic approaches? Shuttle crashes, holodeck malfunctions, Prime Directive getting in the way (KDF/RRF would surely love more of those), aliens-of-the-week, ship caught in yet another anomaly nobody's seen before? Those are nice for single episodes, but you can't make an arc from them.
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Well, yes, literally all of those and they could be part of an "arc" that revolves more around traditional Star Trek and sci-fi elements, like meeting species, helping them out and since it's STO shoot the bad guys.
All that time travel devalues and insignificies (is that a word?
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Since when has any mission chain consistently made sense?
The only ones that come to mind for me are the original ones, and the ones they got rid off when they 'revamped' them.
There's been no Star Trek on TV because they showed with that enterprise garbage that they CANNOT write decent trek anymore, either because no-one actually cares to or because the studio is chasing ratings.
Which is, admittedly, why they put things on TV, to make money.
Not to explore the human condition and show us being enlightened and using our potential for something other then killing each other, unfortunately ratings get boosted by sex and drama and people being bloody daft, not curious about the cosmos and where we fit in it.
The Iconian arc falls way short of decent storytelling, no way at all it was 'masterful' unless you meant that sarcastically or 'masterfully cringe-worthy'.
You, yet again, get a captain giving orders to an admiral / fleet admiral, Paris at first, then Kagren.
A trend started on Kobali prime when a mere CAPTAIN starts throwing the Prime Directive around and giving orders, no Admiral would put up with that, besides which it is the same pointless drivel even if your a KDF or Romulan character too, and since when has the Klingon [iEmpire[/i] ever worried about the federation's Prime Directive?
You have to watch as a klingon captain gets hundreds of thousands of people butchered in a obviously pointless attack that his lieutenant pulls you out of without finishing the job.
Which is the second time a KLINGON runs from a hopeless fight, the first time is right after Kathless runs right into a pointless and hopeless fight, which actually IS typically Klingon.
You get forced into killing the one and only moderate, possibly open to negotiation Iconian out of twelve, because it's too hard to talk to someone who DOES NOT STOP TALKING TO YOU whenever she's in the room.
You get forced to listen to Sela's selfish, arrogant prattling and when she completely goes nuts, you do absolutely NOTHING but stand there and watch as she ruins things YET A BLOODY AGAIN!
There is no way a federation officer, or their away team, is going to just stand there and let someone commit murder right in front of them.
A klingon's code of honor would demand that they protect the Iconian's from ANYONE attacking them (which you had been doing)
As for a Romulan or Reman, they have been just ITCHING for any excuse to vaporize Sela for MONTHS, ever since they junk she spewed on Khitomer.
The Butterfly episode to me is, I Have Big Shiny New Toy, I Must Try It Out Now!
Also, the romulan captain bitching about how now the Borg have stolen cloaking tech from them like the Klingons did is really odd given that as far as I knew the Klingons traded ships for cloaking devices when they were allied with the Romulans.
That above comes right out of the News piece for the next featured episode, so any hope for exploration, like the old clusters, or otherwise is dead, it's been shot in head, staked through the heart with silver, buried at the busiest cross-roads ever.
The only decent time travel episodes are Temporal Ambassador, which is a nice neat stand-alone episode, and Night of the Comet, which ends a mission chain, that while odd in places, still seems to make sense.
(warning, spoilers possibly ahead if you've holding off on this New Dawn chain)
As for the latest batch of featured episodes, well, I held some hope, it was rewarded with Sunrise.
You start out picking up a specialist from DS9, nice bit of Immersion. You get to the sun behaving oddly, warp into the system, start scanning, scan again, go grab some things floating about and smack into the Radiation Minigame from New Romulus, oh well, hit 100 points, move on, head to the next area.
Your sensors are being messed with so it's short range ones only, ok what does that mean? Hit V. Meh ok, things are looking up, find a couple of randomly located things to scan, then there's a load of chatter from your bridge officers, while trying to read it, huh? Red Alert? why? you're being shot at by a suicidal pair of Mesh Weavers.
The mission goes down hill from there to the usual 'kill everything that is red'.
As for the second part, Stormbound? It starts off with 'Kill everything that is red'.
So any hope I had for this series / season etc is gone.
The Temporal Cold War in Enterprise might have been really good, if it had been developed properly, and if the writers had actually thought about the implications of the situation. As things turned out, it was just a mess. (Like so much of Enterprise.)
I'm not optimistic about the direction the current story's going, to be honest. (Which won't stop me playing it, of course.)
Tomorrow was already yesterday time travel just messes with the mind.
Warpangel: Isn't that exactly what Cryptic did with the entire Delta Rising arc? Handful of "prior mention" Aliens of the week get much "fleshing out" (Vaadwaur and Kobali front and center, with touches of Iconians, Benthans, Borg Cooperative, APUs, Kazon, etc. tossed in for seasoning) and an arc be formed?
Angrytarg: Your word is an... interesting... take on "renders insignificant..."
However, I find that the "value" of a good time-yarn is more in watching the protagonist(s) (whether it's The Doctor and Companion, McFly and Brown, Admiral Kills'em'all with intrepid BOff crew of STO fame, etc.) "exploration of the character's growth from bumbling time-idiot to savior of the timestream".
And yes, I'm of the realization that this is probably going to be full of "suck" because it's patently obvious that a "Mirror Universe Joined Trill Host "sheltering" a prime universe "immortal" symbiote" would view the situations much differently than say a "quad-linked telepathic alien", a Betazoid, a Klingon, an Orion, a Romulan (just picking from my main and handful of alts), Kirk / Picard / Sisko / we could go on all day... who all somehow wind up learning the same lessons the same way despite this "head canon variance"...
It's an interesting attempt. I'll pass judgement when the deal is over, however...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
Then again, the Kobali storyline should absolutely have included the option to tell Captain Prime Directive where he can shove it, at least with Klingon and Romulan character. Even if only to be overruled by your own superiors and told to cooperate anyway (since they obviously won't make entirely different storylines for factions). Klingons not behaving according to stereotype all the time is actually very good. Rendering aliens as just racial stereotypes is one of the worst aspects of Star Trek. You get forced into killing M'tara because she doesn't stop attacking you even when it becomes obvious she's losing. Doesn't look very moderate or open to negotiation to me. That's temporal paradox for you. She literally has to ruin things again, because if she didn't then the Iconians wouldn't go all revenge-y and the plot of the game wouldn't happen at all.
She doesn't kill any of the Iconians and Kagran does stop her. As for letting her live...we can only conclude the scriptwriters aren't done with her yet. That was to be expected. However, for me the conclusion was the bigger problem. They erased the Borg transwarp network from history...you know, the one Voyager used to get home, that all our transwarp drives are based on, the one the Borg are using to attack us...but after the mission that massive change to the timeline supposedly doesn't affect anything at all? Personal opinion. Entirely plausible some Romulans might think they got the short end of the stick in that trade.
I knew what this was from the still alone, didn't even have to watch it
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Cryptic combining them both = *nuclear facepalm*
Bad idea is bad, m'mkay?
Gotta honor those classics.
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius