Star Trek: Classic or Dud?

What TNG's theme is the hamfisted bombastic one! I love it btw.

maybe I should have said "least bombastic attempt at being bombastic" to be more clear, re: DS9/Voyager

The problem uniting DS9, Voyager and Enterprise is that all three themes are too *slow*

I guess DS9 works well as a mood-setter though

It's super weird when the TNG theme opens Star Trek: The Motion Picture

DS9 theme is my favorite. Until it changed.

season 1-3 ds9 theme is the best star trek theme yes. season 4-7 version drops a few places in the rankings

ok, the st: enterprise episodes in the dark mirror universe start off with a good joke

they recreate the first contact scene (from the movie), only after zefram cochrane attempts to do the vulcan greeting and fails, he whips out a shotgun and takes out the vulcan

the rest of his people then storm the ship

woah...

just saw TNG season 5 ep 18 Cause and Effect. it's an amazing time travel episode that kinda feels like Twilight Zone or X-Files in places. easily in the top 5 eps of the entire series. really surprised by the quality of this episode since season 5 has some real stinkers.

oh and KELSEY GRAMMER shows up at the end of it in a surprise guest appearance as another space captain trapped in the same time loop. so great

Does he get to make a Shakespearean speech?

he gets to look like he has no idea where he is in time while Picard and crew try to hold back laughter

S5 goes up and down in quality quite dramatically at some points, but has some of my favourite TNG episodes

yeah Cause and Effect is great, really well executed

Data: "I may have inadvertently been responsible for the explained occurrences of the number 3."

i love Data's solution to this problem! and yes really well executed. cool to see Dr. Crusher slowly putting the pieces together, and the ending adds a nice touch of humor.

one of the great time loop episodes ever.

I love that episode, one of the best by Braga. no "evolution" or evil space aliens in sight. it's really well edited too.

they wanted to get kirstie alley to return as saavik just to sit beside kelsey grammer but she refused.

I never watched TNG except for an episode or three, but was sufficiently familiar with the characters and liked Trek enough to have seen (and enjoyed) "Generations" and "First Contact." So I've started from Season 1 on Netflix and . . . man oh man are these episodes bad. Nearly unwatchable. I'm glad the show survived enough to become what it did and I intend to watch through, but that first Ferengi episode, or the one where Wesley gets sentenced to death, or the one with the guys who kidnap Tasha just made me embarrassed for everyone involved. (Please tell me I stop hearing the phrase "rape gangs" after this season.)

The characterizations of the Ferengi would have been embarrassing and too campy on TOS, let alone in 1988. It's like finding people who failed to make the cut for an Omaha Summer Stock production of "A Midsummmer Night's Dream", casting them then the director telling them they aren't hammy enough.

Justice is one of my favorite TNG season 1 eps.

i pity your suffering, Phil. i do think it'll eventually be worth it

yeah season 2 has some great ones and by 3 or 4 the average quality goes up

"naked now" and "code of honor" are so bad the show would likely be canceled right there if it were made today.

watch 11001001 and maybe datalore (which sets up some back-story, but is pretty perfunctory), then skip to season 2.

No way can he miss "Conspiracy" tho

The first season was pretty fun to rewatch, but my enjoyment depended largely on the loving the characters, understanding that it got much much better, and because campy shit is great. Also, the remastering is super lush.

Conspiracy is nothing like any other epsisode, ever, but it's really fun. The ending is incredible (you'll know it when you see it).

Another plug for the Greatest Gen podcast here, but it is really fantastic. They just did Yesterday's Enterprise (mid-season 3), and their pace of a couple episodes a week has been perfect to come along for the ride.

So aside from the awfulness of the Ferengi, "The Battle" was . . . OK.

"Hide and Q" was basically "WHAT IF Riker got Gary Mitchell-ed but was too much of a fucking dork to be either dangerous OR useful?"

"Haven" could have been interesting, but the plot between T-Bag from Prison Break and the hardbody plague girl was handwaved away and wrapped up pointlessly in favor of wedding shenanigoats that were 20 years past their sell-by date when this was made, and parents-of-the-groom who are supposed to be enlightened 24th century humans but were instead 60s sitcom throwbacks.

"The Big Goodbye" - "Hey, you guys remember that one with the gangster planet? You liked that, right? No, I don't know why Dr. Crusher, who clearly wears makeup every day, is mystified by a compact. No, I don't know why we don't have the technology to force open a door in the 24th century, either. Man, wasn't Vic Tayback great in that episode? You're gonna love Lawrence Tierney!"

I never noticed that that one was another TOS rehash episode.

watched Cause and Effect the other night cuz of this thread, that's def as good as TNG gets imo. I'm sure I'd seen it before but had completely forgotten about it. Still a fair amount of magical tech mumbo jumbo but it's not TNG w out that deus ex machina

Apropos of nothing, but Shakey, I will nobly let you revise your ballot to reflect any recent viewings of Trek series.

Cause and Effect is so much fun.

there were some stinkers later in season 5 but when it's bad it's still entertaining as hell. possibly the worst episode next to the one with Data learning comedy from Joe Piscopo, "Cost of Living", based on Troi's mother being basically a manic pixie dream girl mostly hanging out with Worf's son Alexander as they both holodeck to a futuristic artists colony with dreadfully tacky takes on whimsy. it's like Cirque Du Solei on bad acid, this episode.

i last saw "The Perfect Mate" where Famke Janssen plays a space harem girl who has mutant sex powers and tries to seduce Picard. this show is insane.

I will nobly let you revise your ballot to reflect any recent viewings of Trek series.

heh don't worry that won't be necessary none of TNGs best beats TOS's best

xp welp, brb, skipping ahead to that Famke Janssen joint

well they ruined The Borg. "I, Borg" may have worked story-wise but it's a bit too close to being a Full House episode.

Cause & Effect is really good but for real twilight zone brainfuckery try Parallels, Remember Me, Frame of Mind...

Frame of Mind is awesome!

i need to see this full house episode where danny comes to terms with adopting a child soldier whose army kidnapped uncle joey and turned him into a killing machine.

S3E17 iirc

Here, this is suitably annoying, you guys enjoy. Dudes who work on the American Libertarian magazine _Reason_ decided to make a "funny:"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgRlzFIgm1E

"I, Borg" may have worked story-wise but it's a bit too close to being a Full House episode.

I was thinking more "Small Wonder" but yes otm

The drawback of (TNG's) utopian premise was that it did away with most of the interpersonal conflicts that are the bread and butter of episodic television dramas, including the original series. Picard and his crew were all human carbon copies of Spock—even-keeled, rational, and almost impossibly ethical. (Spock himself says so of Picard in “Unification,” the one “Next Generation” episode in which he appears.) That left little room for identification. You could aspire to be more like Picard, the very model of compassion and culture, but you could never truly understand his moral universe. He was nothing like us twenty-first-century humans. He was too alien.

http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-enduring-lessons-of-star-trek

That is why it's great SF! Not interested in future worlds where the people behave exactly like us.

uh ppl are still very horny in star trek. completely relatable.

couldn't relate to all those starchy TNG stiffs

lotta conventional wisdom in that piece and telling that its example of tng is darmok, ie the literal peak, and not any of the 28395329423 episodes about relationships in the workplace. despite being constantly maligned the first couple seasons (w roddenberry's draconian anti-conflict rules in place) are much closer to the advanced cerebral ideal that piece describes than the later, more dramatic, "better" stuff.

also

Tellingly, the original series was at its best when its cast engaged in good, old-fashioned time travel. “The City on the Edge of Forever,”

augh

so so many tng episodes entirely about crew members' (very human, very 90s) feelings. maybe a little metaphorical quantum reverse flux in the warp dampeners to be resolved along with their inner turmoil. nothing wrong w this but it shouldn't get a reputation as the brainy conceptual one.

with some minor exceptions that piece is mostly otm imo. It's strange that it doesn't address my biggest complaint about TNG, which is that it *looks* worse than TOS. The muted colors and bland design add to the air of uniformity and stiffness, which is a huge contrast to the deliberately bright and vibrant and odd TOS.

it does seem a little unfair to criticize TNG for not having anything similar to the Kirk-Spock-McCoy troika (which is what all that "interpersonal conflict" is really a reference to - none of the other TOS crewmembers ever argued about anything! OK maybe Scotty occasionally). The trio's perfectly formed dramatic motor was some real lightning-in-a-bottle type stuff that would be impossible to replicate imo.

well there were guest character conflicts too

there's plenty of that in TNG