Star Trek: Classic or Dud?

haha, SpaceBush? Do you mean that one engineer, or just the series had kind of a conservative vibe? That opening song with the ra ra America stuff was really bad, and coming right after 9/11 was just rmde

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RBlXE_Knsbw

I thought I remembered an American flag waving at some point during that opening. I guess not, but there might as well be

Not crazy about this new CBS All Access gimic

Do you mean that one engineer, or just the series had kind of a conservative vibe

Bakula's captain is quite clearly modeled on Dubya imo - his diction, his squintiness, his casually brash decision-making, his inferiority complex masked with xenophobic bluster, his incuriousioty etc. It's gross.

I guess not, but there might as well be

everybody in it is American - no Yuri Gagarin for ex.

god just thinking about that crapfest is making me irrationally angry all over again

Haha

CSI: Enterprise

Am I misremembering or wasn't there a British dude on "Enterprise"? I only watched like half of one season.

you mean this worthless douchebag? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_Reed

Tony Blair to Bakula's Bush

Would anyone here really be sad at this point if they opted to not make any more Star Trek movies or TV series? Unless it's something really inspired, I'd rather that they just hang it up.

(Kurtzman's involvement doesn't suggest much in the way of inspiration.)

I'm not particularly fussed either way; I do think that Trek's brand of optimistic humanism is outre now, kind of hard to imagine that sort of SF spaceship show after BSG now.

xp Tony from Desmond's to Bakula's Bush

in the abstract I like the idea of a continually ever-expanding Star Trek universe/franchise - much moreso than any other franchise tbh - but in practice it's just not working out so well

after BSG

lol BSG wasn't *that* good - in fact 1/3rd of it was unbelievably shitty

i wouldn't have been sad if they'd opted to not make any more star trek movies or tv series in 1967

i've only seen the really good part of bsg and it sucks

like all the speeches ejo has to gravel his way through simultaneously sound like they were the last thing in the script before deadline

anyway original tos anticancellation campaign was prob when we entered the fallen world

the other day i watched a tng episode about how picard got in a workplace relationship with a woman in the science division and so he had to have serious, halting conversations with troi about the hazards of workplace relationships

Name-checking Lindelof in the press release doesn't bode well.

The beginning Battlestar Gallactica episodes are some the best space shit I've ever seen. As the series goes in it becomes cometely unwatchable.

I loved that episode! They were playing sweet music together! And it was one of the few episodes where they allowed continuity to affect a main character, as Picard talks about his experiences in "The Inner Light". IMO most of the times the episodes that were just space melodrama were better than Weird Space Phenomena of the Weeks eps... Give me Picard's impassioned ethics speeches over inexplicably exploding consoles anyday!

(xxpost)

Whether you liked BSG or not, I'm going to guess that its aesthetics have shifted space SF towards grim/gritty militarism.

The beginning Battlestar Gallactica episodes are some the best space shit I've ever seen. As the series goes in it becomes cometely unwatchable.

^^^

shifted space SF towards grim/gritty militarism

you're thinking of Aliens

yes and no. i mean, it reflected the whole Bush Endless War era, plus it's not like there has ever been a lack of militaristic sci-fi series, feels like at least 50% of "sci-fi" shows are thinly disguised military vehicles in space well before nu-BSG arrived

also yes BSG had some shit stuff towards the end but to deny its greatness in the first couple seasons is some kind of... spiteful regret for time wasted? i'm sure there's a German word for it

^yes on Aliens and that Picard romance episode

the new Abrams helmed Star Trek movies haven't been grim / gritty militarism (<- great description of BSG btw)

def true of the first one (I didn't see the second cuz why would I)

I mean def true that it wasn't grim/gritty realism

everything about the imagining of the 2003-in-space society they're saving in bsg is terrible from the word go. everything with the press or the politicians or the civilian population or the charismatic terrorist whose crime was he "blew up a building" or even the independent military judicial system as represented in the "did you come through the hatch combing" episode is totally sketchy and thick with Contemporary Relevance of the most obvious and least troubling kind. the mass drivers on the fighters are cool.

nah that stuff's great (with some exceptions like the union episode). it's the religious hooha that sank the show

never gotten v far into that.

BSG produced of course by a lot of people who were involved with DS9, another show sunk by religious hooha

grim/gritty militaristic realism is almost as much a part of sci-fi as aliens, spaceships and devices that we wish we had because we're lazy/bored in present era. like wasn't this robert heinlein's entire thing?

note i have only read starship troopers so that is not a rhetorical question, i don't actually know

It was his entire, or even major, thing, no

Has anybody written a decent book about the original series?

all the cast bios are predictably bad in the ways you would expect. I've never read a decent critical analysis of it. Pre-internet my favorite book/resource about the show was definitely this: https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fecx.images-amazon.com%2Fimages%2FI%2F51vgpGPXJ1L.jpg&f=1 which I still have and periodically refer to

'These Are The Voyages' is great if you can deal with the minutiae.

Gene Roddenberry: The Myth and the Man Behind Star Trek by Joel Engel is an entertaining hatchet job that offers one of the few unofficial histories of the program.

Inside Star Trek: The Real Star Trek by Herbert F Solow and Robert H. Justman is a less muckracking but thorough history/making of the show by two people who worked on the original series.

Jeff Bond's book on the music of Star Trek (covering everything other than the Abrams movies but particularly deep on TOS) was really great

http://web-images.chacha.com/images/Gallery/6712/15-celebrities-you-didn-t-know-guest-starred-on-star-trek702174784-feb-13-2014-1-600x300.jpg

Mick Fleetwood as catatonic space ambassador

So I finished season 2 of TNG. Overall a slight improvement from the first season, if I still miss Beverly Crusher. The best episodes are really good. "Time Squared" was an amazing bit of hard sci-fi, trying to figure out causality and time loops. "The Measure of a Man" with Data being taken to court to determine if he is alive or not, what rights should be granted to an android, etc. And possibly the best episode yet, "Q Who", with a very cool and intimidating introduction to the Borg.

Low-points are many though. The comedy episode w Joe Piscopo. The episode where Troi's mom is trying to bang Picard. The final episode of the season, a clips show, where Riker gets stung with a lethal poison that is beatable only by remembering things that happened through the first two seasons.

I look forward to season 3, which I'll probably dive into over Thanksgiving vacay. What is the considered the "best season" of TNG? Really enjoying it so far...

2 is best imo

although it's a very inconsistent show

seasons 3-5 are probably the peak imo, but some decent episodes before and after. q who one of the best.