Star Trek: Classic or Dud?

non-stop religious war/terrorism opera

I don't recall this really happening with TNG but the last seasons are a blur and I'm sure there's stuff I never bothered to watch...? or are you referring to DS9 and after

DS9 definitely, but the Bajoran/Cardassian thing got started in TNG, and esp. TNG season 7, though I don't remember if it was more than one episode.

it's interesting in the early cardassian episodes on TNG, the action is represented by a few blinking triangles on a computer screen and dramatic music when one of the triangles stops blinking, and knitted brows.

by DS9 it's just full-on battle porn.

carl agatha + tuomas otm abt troi's atlantean dress btw, it elevates entire episodes.

(through effort we may all be able to just leave that verb there)

I agree that no conflict at all is pretty silly for a TV series, but OTOH one thing I really like about TNG is that all the main characters have this great, easy-going camaraderie going on, with little soap opera drama between them. (Of course it helps that the main actors themselves have a good chemistry with each other, once they settle into their roles after the soul-searching of season one; in my opinion TNG had one of the best ensembles in any American TV series.) Like, when the series starts Riker and Troi used to be a couple, but that's already way in the past, and yet it's pretty obvious they're still occasionally humping each other, but both of them also get to fuck several guest stars too... And I think most other series would've gotten some big jealousy drama out of it, but in TNG it's not big deal, Riker and Troi just roll with it. Apparently that was because of Roddenberry's vision of how sexuality would be in the 24th century, and TBH it's not a bad vision. Even today, you don't get to see too many series that'd be as sex-positive as TNG was 25 years ago.

weirdly tho even tho people (well mostly bones) are angry or stubborn more often in tos, tng is still way more of a soap opera. the soapiest thing in tos is amok time. or maybe the one with sarek. oodles of tng episodes are abt someone having a Character Journey while something perfunctory threatens the ship.

Tuomas is OTM all over this thread.

xp see every episode where Worf's son Alexander or his mother turn up.

the problem w that approach is that I find so many of the TNG characters inherently boring

i'm being unfair cuz character arcs are not "soap opera" they're just fiction, drama. the characters in TOS are all shallow archetypes. maybe that's just what i want these shows to attempt. there's that onion av club television-optimist tone of just being BOWLED OVER every time someone has two consecutive coherent emotions on a tv show and i am underwhelmed by a lot of that stuff in tng. xp ha.

yeah shallow archetypes work better for me in this context tbh where everything is a brightly colored allegory and ACTION

But it's not really about the action! That's the biggest thing I love about ST, especially TNG, that it actually believes in its non-violent utopia, that the ultimate solution to most conflicts tends to be negotiation and peacemaking. (This, BTW, is the reason I hated the new ST movies, because they discard this idea altogether in favour of standard space opera action.) And you can't have shallow characters doing that. When Picard dressed down the rogue Starfleet captain who's about to reignite the war with the Cardassians in "The Wounded", you gotta hear the conviction in his words! In most American sci-fi shows/movies the rogue captain would be the hero (especially considering that he has understandable reasons for doing what he does), but here he's antagonist to Picard's pacificist hero. So yeah, I don't mind the boringness, I think it's that's what makes the series unique.

I agree w you in general, totally down w the non-violent Utopian vision at the core, but then tbh Kirk plays the rogue captain role plenty. and he will always be my favorite.

Tuomas is OTM all over this thread.

― Jeff, Saturday, February 22, 2014 12:09 AM (42 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I agree! I'm really enjoying your posts, Tuomas. They are very thoughtful and it seems like we approach the show similarly (and with similar enthusiasm). Like I am so on board with this - "That's the biggest thing I love about ST, especially TNG, that it actually believes in its non-violent utopia, that the ultimate solution to most conflicts tends to be negotiation and peacemaking."

From the LA Times, January 1968. A group of Caltech students protesting NBC planing to cancel Star Trek.

http://scontent-b-sjc.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc3/t1/1779214_288895557930907_1159522594_n.jpg

I should say that it wasn't necessarily Roddenberry's original vision that was the issue(tho his idea that there would be no religion at all in the future is weird), but rather his execution of such.

From the LA Times, January 1968. A group of Caltech students

Either that, or a group of hipsters, February 2014.

tuomas otm in this thread - what i love about TNG is that the dilemma is rarely a technical or violent one to be solved - it's almost always a moral choice that needs to be made

Wow @ that photo

DRAFT SPOCK

"tho his idea that there would be no religion at all in the future is weird"

not any weirder than "no need for money in 23rd century"

ds9 really flipped the script on this: "let's make the main character a messiah, and turn the ferengis into objectivist merchant heroes"

true about THE SISKO but the Ferengi thing was always a silly joke

i love TNG and DS9 both for their takes. I did crack up when evil Section 9 showed up in the nu-Trek sequel

I was in undergrad from 94-00 and so was spared much of the weirdness of DS9 and Voyager.

they are comedy but from the very first episode, the seedy commerce that qwark represents is shamelessly touted as the lifeblood of community, and later ferengi-style horsetrading is vindicated as the solution to resource scarcity on multiple occasions. nog totally rubs it in jake's face, too.

oh yeah roddenberry would be doing backflips in his grave over federation stasi

eh, the couple of "heroic" occasions that Quark rises to were mostly a story function, making him not a completely boring one-dimensional character. he got maybe like one episode a season where he was a good guy

you're right about Roddenberry probably flipping over in his grave though - think about the conception of the Ferengi in their first TNG episode *shudder*

I just noticed that Amazon has all the remastered TNG episodes free with prime!

Waita... the Ferengi were originally intended to be the new major villains of TNG, and only became venture capitalists over the seasons.

Also, loads of TNG episodes are resolved with some technobabble solution!

ya but usually the drama itself is resolved through some sort of interesting choice or dilemma, the technobabble is just the mcguffin

so much mcguffin tho. its more like mcstuffin

ya but usually the drama itself is resolved through some sort of interesting choice or dilemma, the technobabble is just the mcguffin

Yep. I can't think of an episode where the problem and the solution would be purely technical, there's always some personal/social/moral drama involved. Even in the episode were Wesley accidentally lets a bunch of nanobots mutate into sentience, and they take over the ship's computer, the main drama shifts from "how do we get them out of the computer?" to "what are the ethics of dealing with this new lifeform?".

I always liked the contrast between those, by televisual standards, fairly searching philosophical questions, and the way the characters all seem to act like hormonal teenagers when it comes to relationships, e.g. La Forge's "why does nobody love me" stuff. This is despite the enlightened attitudes towards sex that Tuomas correctly talks about upthread.

Hah, yes, I guess it's no surprise sci-fi writers are better at writing philosophy than romance and relationships.

La Forge was a proxy for the writers and for dateless Trekker nerds with eyesight problems

Levar Burton has mentioned his take that Geordi didn't get any was because the writers were afraid of black male sexuality.

yeah I can see that too

Meanwhile, at target, for your more knocked-up officer:

http://i.imgur.com/35DQZ7w.jpg

Good look, esp. how it permits femininity within the engineering corps.

Or, if you're TOS, from command.

Wait they sell Star Trek clothes?

2014: The Year Nerd Broke

hott

http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20121204222548/memoryalpha/en/images/a/a6/Data_and_a_pregnant_Troi.jpg

The Almighty Star Trek Lit-verse Reading Order Flow Chart: http://www.thetrekcollective.com/p/trek-lit-reading-order.html

Very useful.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/b62fe1e5a3c8b42d4cd211083531e3e3/tumblr_mzvgtkV2K71rno58uo3_500.png

It's Voyager, and Reddit, but surprising, consistent lolz: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1zn4rq/iama_robert_beltran_aka_commander_chakotay_from/

pretty amusing!

So I've always been a TOS-only (and movies) fan but I wouldn't mind getting into some Next Generation. Any recommendations on where to start? I wouldn't mind taking in a season or two now but watching the entire run is gonna have to wait until I retire.

Season 3