Star Trek: Classic or Dud?

Whenever a Pulaski episode would show up in syndication reruns my young self would just be like "oh.. it's one those episodes"

For me it was the crew-neck slim fit unis everyone wore.

I also like Time Squared from S2, it's really eerie and unsettling, and pretty unusual for a time travel story. It doesn't really make sense in the end - the reason being the writer planned to reveal Q was behind it all a few episodes later, but the idea got show down by Roddenberry - but it's still a good episode.

That episode also provides the "space, where time becomes a loop" quote (said by Worf) which was sampled in loads of techno and trance tunes in the early 90s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2KAplrXOPE

My other questionable advice is to maybe watch the first half of encounter at farpoint (the debut)? Just to meet Q. But then switch off when the ep switches to farpoint station or you get bored.

Nah you gotta get through the pilot, for posterity. Also it informs the finale.

But just the Q scenes!

what happens in the finale I don't remember

Q happens in the finale! Old Picard! Contraction-usin', Lucasian-chair sittin' Data! Worf the functionary!

Best Q costume, too.

"inherently-silly-but-let's-take-it-seriously" is basically how i live my life

Oh man, the best part of Encounter at Farpoint is how they were setting up this big "Picard hates kids and families" thing that they tapered off of fairly quickly

Actually I REALLY miss that aspect, wish they'd kept it going

I love how they manage to meet the most powerful being in the universe within the first two minutes of the first episode.

how they were setting up this big "Picard hates kids and families" thing that they tapered off of fairly quickly

It didn't taper off quickly, Picard's uneasiness around children is referred to every once in a while throughout the series... For example, in the 5th season episode "Disaster" a power failure on Enterprise leaves Picard stuck in a turbolift with three kids, and he clearly has no idea how to handle them. (His solution to that problem is pretty cool, but I won't spoil it if you haven't seen the ep.)

http://homepages.wmich.edu/~johnsorh/Myth/images/cronus.gif

I would attend a Tuomas curated TNG viewing marathon.

Trekkin' With Tuomas

It didn't taper off quickly, Picard's uneasiness around children is referred to every once in a while throughout the series... For example, in the 5th season episode "Disaster" a power failure on Enterprise leaves Picard stuck in a turbolift with three kids, and he clearly has no idea how to handle them. (His solution to that problem is pretty cool, but I won't spoil it if you haven't seen the ep.)

― Tuomas, Saturday, March 8, 2014 10:44 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

totally! i like that he has weird flaws like that

Yeah, the fact that you had a show with three out of the seven leads were women, yet run such that 2/3rds of them were gone by the end of the first season probably should have clued me in years later has to how fucked up the early show was run.

Still several steps ahead of the original Trek, it should be noted, and still pretty good for the 80s when your model was... uh... Plus they tried harder, bringing back Crusher, bringing on Ro later, and of course Troi becoming a much more fleshed out characte

ironic typo?

Pain in the 'R's?

Tasha Yar was an interesting character in theory, so it's sad that they couldn't really figure out what to do with her, and that they hired such a mediocre actor to play her. (Crosby's later appearances in the series are totally meh too.) When Ro was introduced, it kinda felt like she was Yar done right, and with a better actor too, so it's a shame she only became a recurring character and not a regular one.

But yeah, it's nice that they at least managed to flesh out Troi better in later seasons. I remember when I was watching the show as a kid, I didn't much care for her, probably because she mostly just did all the girly stuff, like emotions and all... But now that I've been rewatching the series on Bluray, I find that the girly stuff is often more interesting than the technobabble.

Thanks for "Time Squared" recommendations above. Watched it this weekend - Patrick Stewart's so wonderful and intense in the episode, such a weird contrast with the larky "Riker cooks an omelette" stuff at the beginning, which might as well be from a children's cartoon.

The soundtrack also has this great, spooky pulse effect running through the story - kind of John Carpenter-style - I don't remember TNG going in for that sort of thing very often.

Riker feeding everyone plain omelets and beer is so hilarious to me.

I love the Ron Jones-era music (they fired him in the fourth season I believe). It's totally John Carpenter-esque and weird and great. The music gets pretty boring after he left.

It's a great episode. I don't like the story much, as I dislike time travel plots generally, but it's a brilliant look at how Picard handles a tough unknowable situation, up there with the best Kirk centred TOS episodes.

I'm going to rep again for the https://twitter.com/TNG_S8 twitter thingy due to their feel for the "Riker makes an omelette" backstory

NB I do like that scene! Trek wouldn't be Trek without squareness and goofballery. (Maybe that's why I find Voyager unwatchable.)

Also why most of those movies were so bad

After watching other space odyssey television shows I've realized how much of a goody-goody all these federation noobs are in TNG

i like that the show existed before the era where all the protagonists had to be morally compromised badasses

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Fp7G2kMyTTk/UksGD_tiuYI/AAAAAAAAIks/esSBtA_sCZQ/s1600/Kirk+Smirk.png

i hope you're not implying that Kirk was morally compromised

Kirk was basically LBJ with JFK's libido

paging dr. helen noel

kirk may have been a swaggering chauvinist but he was definitely a certain definition of hero, not a 2000s-era anti-hero

I figured DS9's "In the Pale Moonlight" was ST's feeble attempt to get on the moral compromise bandwagon.

Feeble?????

i love that episode. (garak!)
a lot of the war stuff Ron Moore wanted to do in DS9 clearly got transplanted to BSG, probably did a word replace of "changelings" for "cylons"

I watched DS9 after Battlestar and it ended up taking some of the shine away from BSG, which I had loved before, because some of the fundamental plotlines were so similar. But I don't see it as losing a Battlestar Galactica reboot so much as gaining a beloved Star Trek series so I think it worked out in the end.

DS9 definitely had a broader set of viewpoints in the main cast. With TNG, there are moments of nuance but it basically comes down to Riker occasionally being more aggressive, Troi having more empathy (lol), Crusher having more input on the biological differences between people, Worf having honor and tradition as priorities over other concerns. But for the most part, they're all in line with the Federation goals and mindset.

I'm mainly remembering Sisko's big announcement of sang-froid at the end. "If I had to do it all over again, I would!" That part I found feeble.

But seeing as the episode predates The Sopranos etc I guess it wasn't so much a bandwagon thing.

Garak and Quark definitely give DS9 a lot of extra flavour. There's no way a conversation like this could happen between any of the two cast regulars on any of the other Trek series.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hdiuRMK3UQ

Completely different background but my recent viewing of Farscape with its "we're all on a ship, I guess we kind of like each other, shit happens" has been entertaining for its lack of a prime directive.

See also Blake's 7.

carl: BSG is still pretty great though, they definitely got to do more weird/dark/interesting things that would likely not have flown in the Star Trek universe, also it being actually made during the War on Terror and being more specifically relevant to the times

Sure! I'm still a big fan.

Trek wouldn't be Trek without squareness and goofballery. (Maybe that's why I find Voyager unwatchable.)

Wait, isn't Voyager all squareness and goofballery? (E.g. NEELIX ugh.) (Also Harry Kim.)

It is possible that I am wearing this hoodie at this very moment even...

http://www.syfy.com/_cache/assets/assets/heruniverse/2011-07/f88581900_131110953939.jpg