rjnoe (12/20/82)
There seems to be quite a bit of discussion elsewhere on the net
about favorite episodes of "Star Trek" on TV. Now, these polls are
nothing new to me at all--personally I have participated in literally
dozens of these polls, and heard of many more. But I *did* get to
wondering what the results of such a poll would be if conducted over
netnews.
I am not yet proposing that you all send me your opinions on which
Star Trek episode was best and why, I am only investigating the possi-
bility of doing such a poll. From what I have gathered, not all of
the readers of net.startrek are intimately familiar with every little
detail of every single TV episode (understatement, huh?) but most can
usually remember seeing a particular episode when reminded of plot
details, names, and so forth. At Star Trek cons, polls don't always
even mention the titles of the episodes to choose from, but here I
would only get perhaps ten responses if I conducted a poll that way.
Merely providing a list of titles would not help much. No, if a
poll of this sort is to be done over netnews, it must be accompanied
by episode summaries, similar to the "Star Trek Concordance" by Bjo
Trimble or "Compendium" by Allen Asherman. The Concordance is long
out of print, and I would not think of asking netnews readers to go
find Asherman's work in a bookstore just to participate in a poll.
As I am interested in learning what most (if not all) readers of
net.startrek think, I know it must be made as simple as possible to
participate in the poll.
We can solve one problem right away--I volunteer (gads!) to
provide reasonably objective plot synposes to the net, if such a
poll is in order. Next we come to the problem of the format in
which the summaries are to be presented. I think graphically I can
some up with something very similar to Trimble or Asherman, but
do we really want that long an article out there? (Figure about ten
lines per episode, that makes about 800 lines!) Nor would we want
79 little articles floating around, it would be too easy to miss one
or more episodes. My thoughts were to at least split it into 3
articles, one for each season (roughly 250+ lines each, I guess).
Or maybe that's too big still? I don't know. Perhaps this seems
a really trivial consideration--it is. I want to avoid upsetting
others on the net whenever practicable.
Basically what I am proposing is a poll on the nature of the
Star Trek Best Episode Poll. I will collect and summarize to this
newsgroup. Topics I welcome comments on are:
1) "We do not need another poll--please don't do it."
(If you are in favor of the poll, I do not need to see responses
on the issue of whether there should or should not be a poll.)
2) Plot summaries should be posted
a) One at a time over a period of time,
b) All at once in a single HUGE article,
c) One season per article either all at once or
over a period of time,
d) some other scheme.
3) Content of episode summaries (other than plot, what should it
include? Stardates, names of guest actors, initial airing dates, etc.?)
4) Other random issues which may occur to you as relevant.
I will wait a reasonable time for responses to taper off and then tell
the whole newsgroup about it--probably will not be until after xmas.
As Spock (>-|) says, live long and prosper.
I'm not afraid to name my sign [Virgo]
Roger Noe ...ihnp4!ihuxx!rjnoerjnoe (12/28/82)
Am I glad I asked first! There seems to be a significant lack of interest in a Star Trek favorite episode poll. I am still curious what you all think, but not enough to warrant conducting a poll myself. Maybe someone else wants to, but I will NOT be doing such a poll. However, there is a surprising amount of interest in the Star Trek episode summaries, even among those people who did not favor the idea of a poll (which was the only reason I was going to post those summaries in the first place). I will post those over the coming weeks (no, I do not know how long it will take). There was wide variation in preferences for the form of these summaries, but I think most people will be satisfied with the following: 1) Summaries will be posted in three articles of one season's episodes each. 2) They will include rather detailed plot synopses. 3) They will be ordered by airing date, though this date will not be included in the summary; they will be numbered se- quentially. 4) Character and place names central to the story will be included. 5) As this is not for a poll, I will not worry about being too objective (no flames, please--you do not have to read them!) 6) History and trivia involving episodes may be included. I think that covers just about everything. You'll be hearing from me in the near future. Live long and prosper \\// Roger Noe ihuxx!rjnoe (__)/