TOS: Patterns of Force

[clearspira]

I find this an interesting episode. 20 years after WW2, the majority of the people who made it having fought in the war, and here we have an ep where an historian is crowing about how awesome the Nazi's were. And whilst he does turn out to be wrong, imo the ep implies that it wasn't his views that are wrong but rather his execution of those views, as if a smarter man could have worked out the kinks. I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall in the writers' room for this one.

And as an aside, this ep shows why Kirk is made of awesome. The man barely blinks whilst being whipped. You want something to compare to why Pine!Kirk is such a let down? Here it is.

[clearspira]

Oh, and that subcutaneous transponder, is that not the most laughable piece of forgotten tech in the history of this franchise?
Starfleet: ''gee, we could implant this into every away team so we always know where they are in the possibility that their comunicator/commbadge gets broken or stolen, but nahhhhh....''
Lets file this away with the phaser proof barrels, Ezri's rifle with teleporting bullets, and the cloaking suits from Insurrection.

We can compare at length the merits of Star Trek vs Stargate, but man, would I rather be on an SG team than an away team. At least they carry kit, wear camo, and have guns that work.

[Aotrs Commander]

We can compare at length the merits of Star Trek vs Stargate, but man, would I rather be on an SG team than an away team. At least they carry kit, wear camo, and have guns that work.

Dammit, and now I want to see a Stargate/Star Trek crossover where you put Kirk, Spock, MaCoy and Scotty on an SG team alongside O'Neill, Teal'c, Danial and Sam... The character interaction would be *awesome*.

[rickgriffin]

Oh hey, the TOS episode I've been looking most forward to, just behind the one where Kirk and Spock fight Genghis Khan with the help of Abraham Lincoln.

I always found it funny that some of the writers on Trek were all like "Hey, we really need to work to make this grounded; we wanna do a story with Nazis, so how do we justify it?" while Roddenberry is like "Who cares? Mysteries of the universe, just do whatever, godlike powers etc"

[Jonathan101]

Remember a week or two ago when we sidetracked a thread for several pages talking about Nazi's?

[clearspira]

Remember a week or two ago when we sidetracked a thread for several pages talking about Nazi's?

Yeah but... its an episode about Nazi's...

Unless you are making a joke, that is an odd comment to make.

[Jonathan101]

I know; just noting the irony.

We could have had that conversation fine if we'd just waiting a little while.

[clearspira]

In this context, the correct discussion should be ''how awesome or not were the Nazi's before WW2?'' given how this is the thesis of John Gill and thus the plot of the ep. The Treaty of Versaille would also be something to discuss and how it relates to the situation Germany found itself in. The irony of WW1 is that there were no true good guys and bad guys like you had in WW2, this is just another case of the winners writing the history books. The war was inevitable as you had the British, French, Russian, German and Austrian Empires all vying for one piece of land coupled with obsolete 19th century thinking. The Treaty of Versaille was punishing the loser for something that everyone had a hand in and it directly led to nationalism.

[Jonathan101]

I might derail this WW2 thread with a WW1 rant, because I don't believe that war was inevitable, and I definitely don't believe it was just a case of winners writing the history books- the belief that this was a case in fact contributed to the ride of the Nazi's and even afterwards, became a sort spot amongst German historians when they got a hold of WW1 primary sources and concluded that yes, Germany and the Triple Alliance started the war.

There also seems to be some misunderstanding about German war crimes during WW1; lots of people, maybe most people, believe it was all British or Western propaganda, when in reality- although certainly propaganda exaggerated stuff- the initial German push into Belgium involved a range of atrocities against the Belgian people in accordance with the policies of the German High Command of the time: massacre civilians to quickly and ruthlessly crush all resistance.

So even allowing for lurid exaggerations by the British and others, the Germans still murdered thousands and thousands of Belgian civilians, often ordering men and boys in towns they occupied to march out just to be shot, homes were set on fire etc.

And it must be remembered that many of the German soldiers and officers who joined the Nazi party or rose through the ranks of the Wehrmacht by the time WW2 broke out either took part in these atrocities themselves, or (like Hitler) came to Belgium after the fact and didn't care. There was a culture of brutality even in then German army of the First World War that was inherited and exaggerated by the perpetrators of the Second.

Not saying the Western Powers or Russia were all fluffy and innocent, but make no mistake- Germany was still the bad guy of WW1 almost as much as they would be in WW2.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_of_Belgium

[Durandal_1707]

9:03: Spock! Watch where you're pointing that thing!