Star Trek: Classic or Dud?

Netflixxing and just saw "Conspiracy" for the first time, where Picard phasers a dude and then (a) their face peels off, (b) their HEAD AND TORSO EXPLODES and then (c) a big gross bug crawls out of his EXPLODED CHARRED RIBCAGE.

Anyway, it is awesome. I think the BBC might have edited the original. It doesn't feel very 630pm on BBC2.

The BBC did edit that episode. Someone wrote a letter to 'Points of View' complaining about it, describing the original version, and asking "why oh why did the BBC do that?". Which brought the smug response from Barry Took that the writer had perhaps answered their own question.

TNG is on anazon prime - I've never seen the whole series start to finish so we're going back and watching the whole thing

about 6 eps into s1 ... mr veg warned me that it was weird & kinda boring & omg he was right. tonally the first few episodes were just kinda ~off~ and picard was grumpy & worf's hair ohh boy. that 2nd episode where everyone gets the sexytimes virus was (facepalm)

but then 'The Traveller' episode happened and i almost kissed the tv. loved that episode!!! so good.

now i am just hoping for a fashion intervention for wesley. he's been stuck in that cosby sweater for a month!

episode 7 'Lonely Among Us' gave me this

http://38.media.tumblr.com/61e6d8c4b9a74c98e88252e0e161d228/tumblr_nd2ct8dtbE1td4leto1_400.gif

yeah i lied we're 7 eps in, not 6

There's good stuff in the early seasons but its v inconsistent and actually got *more* boring as it went on imo. Office in space indeed.

Conspiracy is peak TNG.

Well you've made it past Code of Honor at least.

VG there's a podcast called Women at Warp that may interest you.

There's a season 1 episode where someone visits Picard in his ready room, and he's just sitting there staring at nothing, doing nothing, that I thought he was replaced with a doppelganger, but no, the show had no idea how to do normal things at that time.

Also, early episodes are very It's The Number One Show before the writers decided to focus on Jean-Luc and Data.

yeah picard has no personality traits at all in the early episodes except "mildly annoyed"

xxpost ugh code of honor u_u

i will check out that podcast thx carl

Do you mean it got *more* boring in just the early seasons, or later on?

I've also just started rewatching from season one - Netflix just added the HD versions. They are spectacular. I remember the cinematography and pallette being kinda bland on TNG compared to the original series, but it looks *amazing*. Even the black tar blob from "Skin of Evil" looks *amazing*.

I can't rewatch the whole lot - that would be insane - but I'm watching about 50-70% of them. The trick is to work out which are the good bad episodes ("Angel One" and "Naked Now" were both pretty entertaining!) while avoiding the bad bad episodes (Symbiosis, ugh).

Biggest surprise is Dr Bev - she's a much better actress/more interesting character than I remember, even when the scripts aren't giving her much to do.

c.f.

http://tng.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x23/skinofevil_hd_133.jpg

http://tng.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x23/skinofevil_hd_299.jpg

Skin of Evil ;_;

i have to admit that does look a lot better than the original

That does look better. Never been fond of the show's color palette.

I meant more boring as the show goes on tbh.

Xp

yeah the hd is really something!

not *always* good - some of the makeups & hairpieces look more rough than they should in harsh hd, lowfi tv was much more forgiving

but i never noticed that data's skin has a slight pearlescent sheen to it, it looks really fab

Yikes, none of the S1 episodes I caught are quite as bad as "The Child", the second season opener.

I skipped the Traveller episode, gonna go back and catch it now. Thanks!

Is The Child the Deannna forced cosmic pregnancy episode? Bleh.

Season 2 has the worst first and last episode, but otherwise there's a big step upwards in quality. That S2 finale really is awful though; it's a clipshow focusing on Riker, but since the show had only done 2 seasons before it, there weren't enough Riker clips, so they had to include stuff that has little do with him, even though they're supposed to be Riker's memories. The framing story isn't that bad though, so if you absolutely want to watch the episode, just fast forward through all the clips.

A lot of people say that TNG only got good in S3, but IMO S2 is already mostly quite good. "Q Who?" is probably the best Q episode and the best Borg episode... I think the Borg are a classic case of "more is less": the more they showed them and the more they revealed of their backstory, the less threatening they became. I can't really blame them, obviously they realized they'd managed to come up with an interesting and potentially iconic antangonist, one that provided a nice flipside to the show's humanist themes, so it's perfectly understandable they wanted to develop the Borg more.

And IMO "I. Borg" is one the greatest examples of the TNG type of humanism. Even if it also deflates the Borg as a villain, that was really they're only option, because one-dimensional villains simply didn't fit well in a show like this. But you still can't deny the fact that "Q Who?" is where the Borg are at their most scary and menacing in their cold collectivity and unstoppability - none of that Queen Borg bullshit nor the deus ex Picard resolution of "The Best of Both Worlds" had yet diminished them.

Also, I may be among the minority who prefers Dr. Pulaski to Dr. Crusher. Gates McFadden is a good actor, but the scripts she was given mostly had her do the stereotypical doctor stuff... Whereas Pulaski was allowed to be cold and mean, which I thought was a interesting change, and Diana Muldaur handled that part really well. Apparently fans hated Pulaski exactly because she was a mean character, which I find puzzling, because who wants all the protagonists to be overtly nice?

gene roddenberry did!

I think 'Time Squared' is a great Pulaski episode, because she's openly questioning Picard's mental fitness to be captain. Something that happens a lot with Kirk and McCoy, but not much at all in TNG.

(as i've probably said before, the actress who played pulaski was in a couple of TOS episodes, which were only a few episodes apart (2x22 and 3x07, aired feb and oct 1968))

Just started watching this cos from the start those recent pics posted were too good. Only finished 2 episodes and hate Wesley already. Picard is an amazing captain, looking forward to seeing his no-bullshit approach get tested by various weird space stuff. Q was in the first episode, and I kind of like him but also find him extremely annoying. Troi is so hot.

So far I'm halfway into season 2 - he does get *slightly* less annoying, and even helms a couple of okay episodes (Coming of Age and Dauphin)

It seems the writers eventually caught on why people hated Wesley, because the best Wesley episodes are the couple of ones in the later episodes which actually deflate/deconstruct his wunderkind characterization.

It makes me kinda sad for Wil Wheaton that Wesley became the poster boy for "irritating prodigy saves the day", because Wesley's hardly the most egregious example of that trope in genre TV, and Wheaton is not half-bad as an actor, it's just that the material he got didn't give him too many chances of showing that. I thought Jake from DS9 was much better example of what it would really be like a for an adolescent to grow up amidst all this crazy shit, he's basically Wesley done right, if you will.

Like the first thing he does when he weasels his way onto deck is sit in the captain's chair! Who does that? An idiot!

He is the super smart Eddie Griswold of space.

xp otm - they definitely learned some lessons about what not to do from Wesley when writing the Jake/Nog stuff. Often think about "The Visitor".

One of my favourite things about DS9, especially considering how stereotypical and corny the Ferengi originally were in TNG, is that they decided to give Wesley's character arc to Nog instead of Jake. The scene where Nog stands up to Sisko after Sisko has refused to recommend him to Starfleet Academy is one of best in all of Star Trek, it never fails to bring me to tears. Despite Star Trek's general humanist ideas, they still often fell for cliche of making each alien race have only one defining characteristic (Klingons are proud warriors, Ferengi are greed capitalists, Romulans are crafty manipulators, etc), so doing that scene where Nog challenges Sisko's preconceived notions about the Ferengi is tour de force for both the writers, and for Max Eisenberg and Avery Brooks.

I found Picard almost completely unlikeable in the first season. I didnt find Wesley as annoying as I expected? - imo the most annoying thing about Wesley was his Coogi sweater

Jake had a good character arc and a really good wardrobe arc.

http://33.media.tumblr.com/c910cfc07b51723690de215fd080d4ff/tumblr_inline_mwid92uAoU1rfufki.jpg

http://41.media.tumblr.com/68bd9373206fc0a084d2a4000ea86d0c/tumblr_n2zeg8EiyU1tqp225o3_500.jpg

https://rindastartrekds9.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/69c0414d23da51864c95b5642b8da9865e70af66.jpg?w=235&h=300

http://trekcore.com/gallery/albums/jakesisko/theascent_159.jpg

http://trekcore.com/gallery/albums/jakesisko/leave_behind_650.jpg

http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/aliens/images/1/11/180px-Middle_aged_Jake_Sisko.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20100502180323

You could definitely see the first season writers finding their footing with how cranky to make Picard.

is jake the only normal star trek cast character in all the series? every other main cast character is superlative or unique in some way.

Kasidy Yates? Harry Kim?

Poor Harry Kim. So boring.

i'd grant kasidy if she were main cast (but isn't she later revealed to be some kind of #1 badass smuggler or something?)
also wasn't harry revealed to be #1 badass trumpet player or something?

Well Jack is eventually revealed to be a #1 badass reclusive author so he would fall into the category of superlative individual.

Kasidy smuggled goods (weapons?) to the Maquis, but didn't seem exceptional except for the fact that she was also dating a Starfleet captain (or was Sisko still a commander?) at the time.

lol don't remember that about Harry Kim.

harry kim zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

<3 jake

Patrick Stewart was on nerdist podcast a month or two back, and he said Roddenberry had him do a reading of the intro voiceover IN A FRENCH ACCENT.

And they experimented with hairpieces (lol).

Just gonna leave that there.

:D

#1 reclusive author is more like how pappy sisko was #1 cajun restauranteur; more like the casual superlative of a lifetime of applied effort.
not the same as "i was illiterate two years ago. now i'm the first ferengi in star fleet. *drops mic*"

is jake the only normal star trek cast character in all the series? every other main cast character is superlative or unique in some way.

I don't remember O'Brien being superlative or unique in either TNG or DS9S? Sure, he's good at fixing things, but that's his job.

And I'm not sure if you count being a non-human as unique, but in DS9 Kira, Quark, and Dax are all fairly normal examples of their species too. Even with Sisko, the one thing that makes him truly unique (don't want to spoil too much for those who haven't seen DS9) comes to be because he happened to be the commander of Deep Space Nine when the wormhole was discovered. If Starfleet had happened to pick someone for Sisko's post, the same thing would've probably happened to that person.

This difference between TNG and DS9 actually makes sense if you consider their settings... Enterprise is the flagship of the whole fleet, so of course they're gonna pick unique, exceptionally gifted people to work there. Whereas DS9 was not remarkable at all before the wormhole appeared, and Sisko, Kira, Dax, Quark, and O'Brien were already there before that happened.

Bashir and Odo are normal though, but IIRC with Bashir this is addressed in the first episode: someone asks what such a genius doctor is doing on a remote space station, and Bashir says he's interested in "frontier medicine" or something like that. And with Odo we later find out there's plot-relevant reason why happens to be living near the wormhole.

"Bashir and Odo are not normal though"

Quark for whatever reason has the lobes of the Grand Nagus, though, and his and Rom's mom is like the only Ferengi feminist. Plus, he often ends up compromising his ur-capitalist impulses when making moral choices.

on TNG the superlativity is almost a given since it's the flagship and everyone is badass top-of-class unicorn etc...
so gonna assume even as support working stiff character on TNG O'Brien is some kind of engineering badass.

Kira was supposed to be Ensign Ro from TNG who was this singular badass.

The entire Quark family is revealed to be super-important in Ferengi politics. Dax's backstory is she was some badass super-important Klingon ambassador.

Also, it had to be Sisko at DS9.

Quark for whatever reason has the lobes of the Grand Nagus

Originally, that was only because he happened to be the one Ferengi doing business right next to the wormhole, and the Nagus was interested in the trade opportunities it provided. So like with Sisko, it was mere chance he happened to be there when the wormhole opened.

His mother is pretty exceptional, I'll grant you that.

As for compromising the capitalist Ferengi values, we see different Ferengi do it all the time... In TNG Bok compromises them due to his thirst for revenge and Tok does it because he lusts for Deanna and Lwxana, and in DS9 every member of the Quark's family goes against the Rules of Acquisition at one point or another, as does that female Ferengi in the one episode she appears in, and even the Grand Nagus eventually does it! So it doesn't seem like the Rules are so ironclad that going against them every now and then is a unique quality in a Ferengi.