Star Trek: Classic or Dud?

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.

IIRC arguments about the best season usually revolve around the season that ends with "The Best of Both Worlds, Part 1."

Nobody thinks S2 of TNG is the best one

who you callin nobody

You really rate S2 that highly? Against 3? I'd even take the best of S4 over the whole of S2.

I think it's highs are better than any other seasons. I think quality varied really widely with this show from episode to episode, regardless of season. As the show went on I got progressively tired of it. Sometimes I'll try to rewatch random episodes (since this show is *always on* somewhere) but most of the time I find it a slog. Season 2 is the season I have fond memories of initially watching as a teen, and it's best episodes stand out to me more than other subsequent high points.

Not sure if it's come up earlier in the thread, but scripts for much of season 2 were badly affected by the 1988 WGA strike.

Agreed that TNG became a bit of a slog through later seasons. Granted the highs could be very high, but a lot of episodes were quite dull. Kooky S1-S2 over dull S7 for me.

This is fun:
http://graphtv.kevinformatics.com/tt0092455

Personally I'd say season 5 is the best. It includes two of the absolute best high-concept sci-fi episodes in all of Star Trek ("Darmok" and "The Inner Light"), several other good episodes with a neat Star Trekky concept ("I Borg", "Cause and Effect", "The Next Phase", "Conundrum"), the introduction of the best supporting character in the whole series (Ensign Ro, though sadly she didn't become a regular, this is the only season where she features prominently), episodes that play around with the genre of the show ("Disaster" is essentially a disaster movie set on the the Enterprise, "Ethics" is a medical drama, "Power Play" is Die Hard style action), and even the mythical Good Wesley Episode ("The First Duty").

Sure, season 5 has some clunkers (the worst one being "The Outcast", which was actually meant to be a story that criticizes homophobia via a sci-fi metaphor, but due to some bad choices in the execution of the script, it actually comes off as sexist and anti-gay), but so does every season of TNG. That's just a fact you got to accept with the series, with its episodic nature and rolling crew of writers: you never know whether the next ep you watch will be smart and thought-provoking, or a ham-fisted and preachy. Thankfully the main cast remains solid and reliably entertaining throughout the series, so there's always at least something to enjoy in every episode.

Thanks to this thread I've started watching the show. I saw an episode here and there when I was a boy, but I was never a superfan. I'm halfway through season two, which is supposed to suck but I'm really enjoying it! Biggest takeaway so far is that Patrick Stewart absolutely kills it in every scene. What an amazing actor. He is the fucking Captain. But Pulaski is absolutely horrible. There is no heart to the character at all, and a role like that needs heart. Haven't gotten to the Q Who ep yet, but favorite one so far is probably the one where they revive the frozen 20th century people. Lots of laughs in that one. Love how most of the crew couldn't care less that there's revived four-hundred-year-old humans onboard. Second favorite probably Contagion.

This is fun:
http://graphtv.kevinformatics.com/tt0092455

I'm surprised that the highest rated s7 episode is "Parallels", the one that started worf/troi and had riker killing another evil riker. "Lower Decks" ftw.

i like pulaski cuz i'd have a bad attitude on that ship too, and because she was in that tos episode where ancient power-hungry aliens possess the crew and spock keeps grinning impishly

Snrub is that the episode where the one guy keeps insisting on accessing his bank account and Picard is just "lol money"?

Yep!

I also liked Pulaski because she was so mean! Fuck having a heart, she was a great contrast to every other human in the series. Also, I think she's the only doctor in the whole franchise (this might've happened in TOS too, I haven't seen it in years?) who actually was gonna use the doctor's prerogative to deem the captain mentally unfit and give him mandatory sick leave. Considering all the reckless stuff Picard did throughout the series, this should've happened more often, but of course Crusher (with her special relationship to Jean-Luc) was never gonna do it. (Her lenience goes to ridiculous extremes in the future scenes of the series finale, though I guess it's kinda mitigated by the fact that they'd been married by then.)

'Time Squared' is one of my favourite TNG episodes, but it's also the least TNG-like because it's so focused on Picard and his reaction to the situation. But that's also what makes it such a great episode.

http://www.startrek.com/legacy_media/images/200506/tng-152-fento/320x240.jpg

Ray Wise cameo in season 4

eh, season 3 ep 4

we've all wanted to at some point:
http://www.slapkirk.com/play

Should also note:

Star Trek Beyond

merry fuckin Xmas btw:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/princessparkle/24022375842

I've just finished watching every season of DS9. On reflection seasons 1-4 are really good and it was just commitment that kept me going through 5-7. I nearly gave up when Odo and Kira got it together (bleugh most awkward couple ever) and when the new Dax appeared I nearly stopped watching altogether (cutesy omg I'm a simbient host was nauseating) Also what's the whole Vic Fontaine thing about? Very weird.
High five to Gul Dukat, best consistant character in every season, also Garrick, maybe it's a Cardassion thing? Shout out to the Ferenghi, they held the whole thing together.

I'm now off to tackle the entire Voyager boxset now, everyone needs a hobby right?

All of Voyager? Dear God, why would you want to do that to yourself?

I missed only one episode of Voyager in its first six seasons, I would warn off anybody trying to do the same.