See my above comment. He had no idea what was going on. He couldn't interpret the implications of what Card had told him; he didn't understand the situation at all.

I am so sick of this shit. Of all the Bush-apology defenses, it’s possibly the worst. It’s fourteen years later and it still makes me furious.

Thank you. I've been making this point over and over for, like, decades. The fact that the engine nacelles fall off the model kit is irrelevant to the Enterprise's spaceworthiness.

Oh, agreed on all counts. He's pretty much the only person involved with the entire "TOS films" project who seemed to know what he was doing (with Nimoy and Bennett running a close second and a distant third).

Look, man, you started it with the imperious "Wrong." in response to what I'd posted. I'm not being any more didactic or conclusive than you.

It's a difficult burden but I try to live up to it.

It's true.

Damn right.

Right, but what I'm saying is, even the idea of the Enterprise A as "the Yorktown re-badged" is being kind; it's a retcon.

But it's a different shape. The entire hull has a completely different configuration and profile. It'd be like somehow "rebuilding" a Mercedes and ending up with a Lexus.

That's a known issue. They screwed it up somehow; ILM had to work very hard to get it to look reasonable (but then, that's what ILM is there for).

I admit that stuff is at least up to paperback-cover-painting standards. It's acceptable; better than the Enterprise D, which looks like it was designed by Fischer-Price.

It's worse than that — it's mid-1980s bad taste. (The show debuted in 1988.) Hyatt Regency Hotel modern. Pastel colors and neon. Mullets. Viewed today, it looks like Falcon Crest.

Those are all bad.

I'm familiar with those lyrics. (They're a frontispiece to the 1975 book The Making of Star Trek.)

Every single design element of The Next Generation is awful.

Well, obviously opinions vary and it’s all personal taste etc. but I’ve always disliked the Goldsmith theme. I think it’s brackish and loud and artless and doesn’t convey anything except pomp and circumstance (which makes it perfectly suited for its original context, which is a series of extremely long sequences of…

I acknowledged that. I was very careful to get that right; check the numbers I used each time. I said three spinoff series (Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise) and I said four movie themes:

But that's obviously a lot of horseshit they came up with later. (I know you're kidding, but still.) The fact is they were making this enormous expensive movie right after Star Wars and they just decided that they needed weird-looking aliens who spoke in subtitles and a slick-looking new spacecraft for the heroes. And…

Actually none of this stuff holds up under scrutiny when it comes to visual consistency. The appearance of the Klingons (yes, I know about the joke in Trials and Tribble-ations); the uniforms; the fact that the interior of the stolen Klingon bridge from Star Trek III is replaced by a completely different set with a…