Star Trek: Classic or Dud?

technobabble rot set in w TNG, where they would literally dick around for an entire episode before resolving the core conflict with a bunch of made up words

another garbage star trek movie coming out

the writer of Spaced / Shaun Of The Dead and the director of Community's paintball episode / Fast Five = the first Star Trek movie I might see in over two decades

I'm holding out hope it's better than the last one. It def has a better writer

The first reboot movie is okay! The second... is not.

Completely onboard participating in a Star Trek poll, in whatever form it takes shape. A top episodes poll would be good, with a separate vote for best series. Would be interesting to see how the best series votes compare with a derived ranking from the series' showings in the episodes poll.

Seems like 5 people is enough for the poll! Should the deadline be a month from whenever I (or if someone else wants to curate this, they) start the thread?

I should see if the dudes who made a list of essential/reasonable DS9 episodes did a Voyager guide. I rewatched a bunch of episodes last month and could make recommendations. There are some odd trend that set in, and the mid/late-seasons have a better hit rate than the earlier ones. Poor Harry Kim isn't allowed to find romance unless it's with a member of an alien race that hates outsiders or it's with a woman who is about to die (or died!). Poor Harry.

There's a very wtf episode where the doctor has to hide his program in Seven of Nine's borg implants and takes over her personality, leading to some creepy romantic tension when he uses her body in questionable ways that verges on being, or very much is, exploitative

I'm only up to where she first comes in the show (tho ive seen later eps before) and my bf is well pleased, because all he was waiting on was "Sevens cracking knockers". Sigh.

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Star_Trek_101

VOY:
"Caretaker"
"Flashback"
"Scorpion" & "Scorpion, Part II"
"Year of Hell" & "Year of Hell, Part II"
"Timeless"
"Bride of Chaotica!"
"Dark Frontier"
"Relativity"
"Blink of an Eye"
"Endgame"

I'd add Distant Origin.

Voyager grew on me. Dreadfully boring for stretches, but had some real gems.

"Sevens cracking knockers".

straya

there is the occasional disaster of an episode like "the lazarus effect" where people do talk like geordie.

― denies the existence of dark matter (difficult listening hour), Tuesday, March 1, 2016 3:30 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what i meant here was "the alternative factor", which features a guy named lazarus and ends with kirk saying "but what of lazarus? what... of lazarus?" as if it means something. (metaphysical technobabble.) "the lazarus effect" is a movie i read the plot of last night while researching olivia wilde's filmography on wikipedia.

there are a lot of great non-campy performances in the original series imo

obv the acting style is very different, but i dunno i associate "campy" with something like the adam west batman, not someone like shatner who's deeply committed to everything he does (or at least did in his heyday). don't really think any of the other leads are campy either.

I'd also add to that voyager list "The Thaw", and the Futures End double just for all the lolworthy 90s shit and Sarah Silverman appearance.

Oh! And Blood Fever, only because I had no idea that was wholesale the plot of that Futurama episode where Zoidberg goes to his home planet and does KLAWFLARGH with the other lobster guy.

xxp often quite strong supporting roles too -- montalban obviously; mark lenard as the romulan captain in "balance of terror"; arnold moss as KODOS THE EXECUTIONER; might get scoffed at for this but i think the woman (barbara luna, it says here) who plays terran empire kirk's lover and co-machinator in "mirror mirror" is allowed room to give a surprisingly serious performance for a woman wearing a belly shirt in a star trek tos episode.

i also like harry mudd but that might be camp.

enjoying this tng episode where riker's enterprise life may be a delusion, after being v caustic (to nobody, but out loud) about this cliche as rendered in the netflix synopsis. maybe because it's about being in a play. i also liked the buffy episode with this plot.

also every time riker yells "I'M NOT CRAZY!!!" i yell "YOU'RE THE ONE WHO'S CRAZY!!!" and it hasn't stopped amusing me yet

i associate "campy" with something like the adam west batman, not someone like shatner who's deeply committed to everything he does (or at least did in his heyday).

Our definitions of camp are close to precisely opposite! They must've got mixed up in the transporter.

JUST ONE PEPSI, AND NEELIX WOULDNT GIVE IT TO ME

I went to YOUR academies, I went to ...

enjoying this tng episode where riker's enterprise life may be a delusion

Far and away the finest of the tng headfuck episodes.

I dunno, I prefer the one where everyone loses their memory and they have to figure out what their position on the ships, and there's a mysterious new officer among them that everyobe assumes was always there. Or the one where everyone keeps disappearing until Dr. Crusher is the only one left on board. And I guess "The Inner Light" sorta counts as an headfuck episode too?

The "Riker's life wasn't real" episode was very well done, but the mystery part didn't really work, because of course they're gonna reveal that the parts in the mental hospital were the real delusion, not the parts on Enterprise. They weren't just gonna suddenly erase all 6 years of the series. Some of those other headfuck episodes are more fun to watch, because you genuinely don't know what's going on and where it's all gonna lead.

Suspension of disbelief, have you tried it? The Dr Crusher one ('Remember Me') is excellent though - I did make a list of about ten headfuck episodes somewhere...

The O'Brian spending like 20 years in captivity, Hard Time is a good one. Poor O'Brian.

because of course they're gonna reveal that the parts in the mental hospital were the real delusion

Well, the central question of those episodes (see also "Tapestry") is never "Is this real?" but "How's s/he going to get out of it?" And because we really like the characters, we really want to see them succeed.

Like, it's never in doubt Columbo will find the murderer - how he's going to work it out is the real point of tension.

What about that third season episode when Columbo was shot in the face and killed? It seemed like all bets were off after that.

because of course they're gonna reveal that the parts in the mental hospital were the real delusion

Well, the central question of those episodes (see also "Tapestry") is never "Is this real?" but "How's s/he going to get out of it?"

Sure sure, but IIRC most of the episode was spent on Riker wondering whether or not he was really in a mental hospital, and when he figures out the hospital fake, he just wakes tied to some simulation machine, and the episode is over soon after that. So the "how's he going to get out of it?" part wasn't very imaginative either.

the part i like most about that riker episode is the superfluous sexytime scene.

you guys should watch the buffy reality switch episode that was mentioned. it's in season 6 and it's called "normal again".

for the record i think the buffy episode is hugely better, richer, smarter, in some ways a parable for the effect of depression on your loved ones, and unlike the tng episode it ends in ambiguity.

i liked that Buffy ending but similarly it's kind of a cheap shot since duh we know Buffy is in its sixth season at this point
also not a small chance it was inspired by that TNG episode

oh yeah it's not real ambiguity because of course the show we come back to next week is going to be about buffy the vampire slayer and not buffy the coma survivor. that's all the more reason to not bother to resolve it imo: it turns into the kind of possibility that doesn't actually matter.

anyway scrolling up itt i found years of tentative ballot poll planning that never came to anything. (some tension between tos and tng camps, both of whom seem to think the other one will ruin their list. but separate polls for each series seems to me an awful lot like work, plus of course hugely contracts the voting base for each poll, especially post-tng ones.) for real this time imo!

I have no idea how I would rank episodes tbh. "Plato's Stepchildren" would be p high up, "Devil in the Dark"... hard to say what else.

Combine them all, it's the only way.

"balance of terror" a big one for me despite its leaving out most of the usual star trek stuff in favor of what's basically a naval-combat drama. but its empathy for the romulans is very trek.

the diptych of s2's "a private little war" (allegory not for vietnam but for the self-exculpating american fantasy of vietnam; comes down on the side of the war but allows bones a furious dissent) and whatever that s3 one's called where the gas is making everybody hate each other (first line on return from commercial: we must stop this war now) is pretty central

i love the colors and the kirk pauses in "the gamesters of triskelion" but the drag queen jokes are a drag

"the squire of gothos" a #1 contender imo -- weird, funny, has a nice after-school point to make about power and maturity, lots of fuck yeah kirk stuff. some people prob find the squire unwatchable tho.

spock character episodes always good: "amok time", "journey to babel", the one where he defects to the romulans.

"mirror mirror" the absolute peak of Goofy Trek, partly because it's not all goofy. evil spock -- so totally similar to good spock -- the scariest villain in the whole show. evil kirk on the other hand a hilarious idiot. spock's reply to "what is it you want, spock? power? i can get that for you, spock! I CAN GET THAT FOR YOU!" is nimoy's single best "fascinating."

oh man yeah Amok Time and Mirror Mirror are fantastic

Random thought that just occurred that there's something very Star Trek(or maybe just PKD-like) about the two-parter GI Joe episodes where Shipwreck wakes from what he's told is a years-long coma only to find he's trapped in a synthoid/replicant/LMD village constructed entirely for him by Cobra.

Maybe I've been playing the new PKD-like game "Californium" too much over the last few days.

oh also "space seed" of course.

stuff with the woman besotted by khan's sneer of cold command reads a little hokey nowadays, but i love it: it's more about historians' dangerous relationship with their subjects than it is about men and women imo.

also the scene where spock is horrified at the humans' sneaking admiration for khan's savagery -- "gentlemen!" -- and everyone laughs at him is a+

my fav moment in that episode is when kirk sort of tricks khan into inadvertently revealing who he really is, and instead of getting pissed off like a normal tv villain would, khan just smiles admiringly and murmurs "excellent, excellent," like he really appreciates having a worthy adversary.

yes!

he's been asleep for so long, and before that things were so easy

like the movie, that episode almost jumps into another realm from the rest of the show the moment montalban enters (wakes). how long?

the weird quasi-respect between kirk and khan is one of the things that makes that episode so intriguing. if you think about it, it's a little insane that kirk allows these incredibly dangerous people to go free at the end of the episode. (i also always thought khan was right that it was pretty careless of kirk never to check up on their progress.)

yeah totally, the inarguable validity of khan's grievance makes him a real ahab instead of just an ahab reference.

admiral!