Star Trek - Space: The Final Frontier

[Jesus Goldstein]

Insurrection-Make the Baku the bad guys, because they already were. (And it goes without saying, don't make the TNG crew support them just because Picard wanted to get his geriatric dick wet from some centuries old hippie bitch.) That doesn't even invalidate the central conflict of the movie. The Federation wants the fountain of youth, because they're in the middle of the Dominion war, and could use the medical help... and the Baku are assholes who perched there and they don't want to share. Hell, have the Baku ally with the Dominion. (Because the immortal Founders don't even need a fountain of youth to begin with.)

Michael Piller’s Fade In is an interesting behind the scenes view of the development of Insurrection. He basically started with a couple of ideas and scenes in mind (Picard vs. the Federation, aging and the fountain of youth) and tried to construct a script around them. I don’t think there was ever a good idea to begin with, but it’s interesting to see how the script developed and had to be changed as he played his ideas off of Berman and ran up against budget issues and input from Stewart.

I hated the idea of the Borg Queen as soon as I heard about it. It got even worse when she turned out to be some kind of horny spinster. The chilling thing about the Borg was exactly what Q offered up: you can't outfight them, you can't outrun them, you can't negotiate with them. They're one vast, faceless, gestalt being made of zombie cyborgs, driven and calculating, but also emotionless and kind of mindless. Very instinctual, like a swarm of army ants.
Then in one fell swoop they were given a face, that of a moustache-twirling Ayesha ripoff subject to flattery and bamboozlement, and made into her slaves. I don't know about anyone else, but for me it killed the concept and the threat of the Borg.

I can’t remember where, but I thought I read (maybe in Piller’s book) that the script writers introduced the Borg Queen because they felt they needed a villain that the cast could interact with and trade lines with.

 

[kaien]

I can’t remember where, but I thought I read (maybe in Piller’s book) that the script writers introduced the Borg Queen because they felt they needed a villain that the cast could interact with and trade lines with.

Yeah, that was the problem they solved by Borging Picard in Best of Both Worlds. But you can only pull off that particular stunt once.

 

[Standardized Profile]

I didn't have a problem with the Borg Queen in First Contact. It's the homunculus of their collective consciousness, an emergent property of the group-mind that gives it executive functionality so it isn't a schizophrenic mess all the time. It appeared symbolically in Picard-Locutus's mind as a queen, then physically instantiated itself using that same symbol, but only when the Borg had set up shop on Picard's new ship. The Queen exists because something like it must exist within the Borg psyche, and because the Borg were trying to get their hooks back in Picard.

The Queen became a problem when the writers decided she was an independent actor within and distinct from the Collective. She should never have been in Voyager, except perhaps as a lingering influence in Seven's mind. Instead, she's reduced to an ineffective commander watching events on her TV screen and giving orders to the drones, like any cheap villain. "You think in such three-dimensional terms. How small you've become."

 

[JamesFargo]

Change one thing about each TNG movie to make them better.

Those movies are fundamentally broken.

They needed to demolish the sets for Voyager, so Generations was greenlit. Insurrection may as well not exist. They killed off Data in Nemesis, robbing him of his happy ending in TNG. (Then again, Picard is predicated on the belief that "Measure of the Man" didn't happen.)

I hated the idea of the Borg Queen as soon as I heard about it. It got even worse when she turned out to be some kind of horny spinster.

Alice Krige owes her career to sidelining better villains. "Christabella'" in Silent Hill; it's the same thing there.

 

[raider of the lost wifi]

Those movies are fundamentally broken.

They needed to demolish the sets for Voyager, so Generations was announced. Insurrection may as well not exist. They killed off Data in Nemesis, robbing him of his happy ending in TNG. (Then again, Picard is predicated on the belief that "Measure of the Man" didn't happen.)

They also cut data's brother out of Nemesis. He was originally intended to have replaced him.

 

[BScCollateral]

Incidentally, can we take a moment to laugh at the idea of impoverished settlers who live in a warzone and adamantly refuse to emigrate to a post-scarcity paradise that welcomes them with open arms? They used this idea a lot so I guess it used to be considered insightful social commentary somehow.

It would make a lot more sense if the Federation actually was a realistic post-scarcity utopia: a population made almost entirely of people masturbating in holodecks.

 

[JamesFargo]

made almost entirely of people masturbating in holodecks.

Who cleans up the splooge afterward? Is that the EMH Mk. 1's job, too?