Star Trek: Classic or Dud?

sometimes the future loops beige on itself
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/bd/St1-cast_publicity_shot.png

I put it to you that this is all accurate.

http://imgur.com/gallery/wpZ4w

i'm on the final season of TNG! the really good episodes are sort of few and far between now and they are kind of loosing the plot a bit.

it's kind of unfortunate how they handled The Borg imo. they were never as strong as those first couple of episodes, everything after they took over Picard is a little meh.

Data having dreams is an interesting idea but i feel like they are relying on the fish-eye-lens trick way too much. i loved seeing him struggle and asking Picard what to do, Picard telling him to use them as inspiration, and Data setting out to manically re-create his dream imagery through paintings. absolutely hated HATED Data stabbing Troi in "Phantasms". i was convinced that was a dream as well and it would turn into Inception a bit but no, they go full horror mode for it, and it's a bit too much to take. especially how everyone quickly brushes it off. if you had an android that was suddenly suffering from nightmares and hearing voices telling him to "Kill them" and then violently attacks a crew member wouldn't you do more than just confine him to quarters for a bit?

"Frame of Mind" from Season 6 was pretty entertaining, reminding me a bit of the Bjork video about the play where the play is about them writing the play etc. on the one hand i felt like they were leaning a bit hard on Riker going crazy for the latter half of season 6, but he's a convincing enough actor to pull it off.

"Ship in a Bottle" is a great holodeck episode. Moriarty from Sherlock Holmes LEAVE THE HOLODECK, something that should be literally impossible, and the episode is a great mystery that has a cool Inception-style payoff. sorry i keep referring to that movie lol

"Starship Mine" was probably the most impressive of the past 2 seasons, basically Die Hard In Space. what a great premise: the Enterprise is evacuated for a standard cleaning procedure and top staff gathered to a dull diplomatic meet-and-greet when Picard overhears an opportunity to go horse riding. upon going back to the ship to get his saddle, he discovers it is being infiltrated by terrorists, and one-by-one he has to take them out, reclaim his ship, etc. all while a giant fatal space laser is slowly sweeping the ship from front to back. SO GOOD.

ship in a bottle is the best tng ep

YES i love the solution they come up with

picard breaking the fourth wall in his closing remarks is A+++

It's a mean trick they pull (in Ship in a Bottle), and ridiculous that a self aware AI spontaneously generates and they basically go 'lol' and then shut it up in a cupboard and forget all about it. A bit like the stuff in Plato's Stepchildren that can give anyone godlike psychokinesis, but is never mentioned again. Or the gate in The City at the Edge of Forever - "many such journeys are possible!", nah mate we've had enough.

watch Yesteryear in the animated series

Greatest Gen podcast still killin' it

It's a mean trick they pull (in Ship in a Bottle), and ridiculous that a self aware AI spontaneously generates and they basically go 'lol' and then shut it up in a cupboard and forget all about it.

Well, there's also the episode where the ship's computer gives birth to a sentient lifeform, and the other one where Wesley accidentally creates sentient life from his pet nanobots, so this sort of stuff seems to be happening every other day in TNG. Though I guess that raises the question why everyone is so in awe of Data being a sentient artificial life form, when a teenager can create the same literally out of his school science project.

they all know that data fucks, dude

makes all the difference

And with Moriarty they at least remembered to return to the question left hanging four years earlier (what do we do with this sentient holodeck character?), which was nice, considering how light on continuity TNG as a whole was. IIRC they would've wanted to address that plot thread earlier, but the actor wasn't available until the 6th season. They even make a meta joke about it in "Ship in a Bottle", where Moriarty is like, you just all forgot about me for years, wtf?!

(xpost)

Didn't Lt. Yar make Data promise he would never tell about the fucking to anyone else?

http://www.vulture.com/2016/10/bryan-fuller-out-as-star-trek-discovery-runner.html

c'mon, you can tell just by looking at him that data fucks, man

I really like "The Next Phase"! It's where Ro and Geordi "die" in a transporter accident, but it reveals the mystery without technobabble overload, and loads of funny moments -- Ro being chased by the similarly phased Romulan through random crew quarters, Ro and Geordi going to their own wake, Ro being intrigued at what Riker might have to say about her, and then her reaction when she's not going to hear it. And I guess this is one of the better Ro episodes!

I think that I'm more into the more fun sci-fi episodes more than the ones That Make You Think or get tangled in some ethical dilemma or other sacred TNG cows -- I enjoyed it more than "The Inner Light" and "Yesterday's Enterprise" by a far margin!

IIRC they would've wanted to address that plot thread earlier, but the actor wasn't available until the 6th season.

I think it wasn't that the actor was unavailable, it's that they had trouble licensing the Moriarty character from the Doyle estate.

Holmes isn't public domain by now?!

has to be now because there are a hundred different publications of that stuff and it's free on amazon kindle.

I believe the early Sherlock stories were PD when the season 2 episode was made, but the story with the Moriarty character wasn't. it's all PD now.

ah gotcha

i've finished all of TNG. what should i look at next? i've seen all of TOS and all the movies. i heard the 70s animated series is actually pretty good. or Deep Space Nine?

into the 5th season of voyager now, lots of duds but some really good eps occasionally and janeway is always great

xp DS9 is the next best for sure. much like TNG it takes a couple seasons to really find its footing but it certainly rewards watching the whole thing more than any other trek as it has better characters and a bigger-picture plot to get invested in

DS9!!!!

^^^

Yeah, when it comes to overall quality, DS9 is better than TNG. Especially if you like longer story arcs, because there's one or two big stories that dominate the latter half of the series, and they're mostly quite gripping and well-written.

Be warned, though, that the first season is almost as spotty as TNG's... It gets better right at the beginning of season 2, but if you feel like you don't want to waddle through all of the mediocrity of the first season, these are the essential episodes to watch:

Emissary
Past Prologue
Captive Pursuit
Dax
The Nagus
Vortex
Battle Lines
Progress
The Forsaken
Duet
In the Hands of Prophets

Past Prologue, Captive Pursuit, Progress, and Duet are all genuinely great episodes, especially the latter two. The others I included because they either move the larger arcs forward, or include important character development, though they all also have good story moments besides that.

If you want to watch the most weirdest episode of the entire series, and one that's often rated among the worst of Trek, you can add "Move Along Home" to the list. Personally I don't think it's that bad, but it definitely is... something different.

Regarding DS9, this is what you're looking for: https://medium.com/maxistentialism-blog/star-trek-deep-space-nine-in-82-5-hours-10acde591fd2

Even if you decide the whole thing rather than following his recommendations, his extended preamble absolutely nails the reasons the series is so great.

*to watch

Just discovered this is on Netflix uk so I'm about to embark on the great journey.

Yeah, it appears it was recently added to non-US versions Netflix, I've been rewatching the first seasons episodes in sync with my gf in Costa Rica-

In fact, I think DS9 deserves a dedicated (re)watch thread, so I started one:

Deep Space Nine: a thread for (re)watching this awesome series

Move Along is terrible!

Voyager is absolutely carried by its characters, I have to say I probably have the most overall affection for its cast of any of the ST crews. It's what carries me through the inevitable lulls in its plotting.

i feel the opposite about Voyager - Seven, the Doctor, Tuvok, and Janeway are good characters but the rest of the cast are pretty boring (Paris, Chakotay, Harry, Kes) or aren't really given enough of a chance to distinguish themselves (the episode where Neelix dies and is brought back to life by Seven and has a crisis of faith is one of my favorites but it's the only time they really let the character do something meaningful. Torres gets a few good episodes but i'd still put her in this boat too). the Voyager episodes that work best for me are the high concept TNG-style ones where the characters don't matter as much.

Move Along is terrible!

I liked it!

Torres gets a few good episodes but i'd still put her in this boat too

Like that Klingon Barge of the Dead boat?

Move Along Home is silly but it has some interesting visual stuff in it which is more than you can say for a lot of the other dud episodes

http://i.imgur.com/lFnXzML.jpg

DS9 and Voyager probably have the most character development out of the series. Voyager out of necessity -- wow it would have been a hell of a slog if they had that premise and everyone remained static.

I'd kind of forgotten how much development there was on DS9. It wasn't just the writers getting into a groove after a few season, although that happened. Rewatching the early part of the series and seeing Kira as still unable to trust Sisko (she calls his boss to complain!) and an away team trapped in one of Odo's memories as he comes to terms with the fact he executed innocent people during the Cardassian era of the station.

I tried to start on DS9 but the premiere was so bad (often in a v odd way - wtf is up w the Captain's line readings) I couldn't go beyond it

sisko line readings are legendarily weird

the DS9 premiere is pretty good so if you weren't into it then i doubt much else is gonna change yr mind

it was mostly Sisko's line-readings, the clumsy flashback, and the ferengi that put me off (I've never like the ferengi as characters)

I'm not that into the ferengi culture episodes, but DS9 has a core ferengi family that nearly redeems the weird stereotypes they represent in some of the other series

DS9 pretty much rescues the Ferengi from the cartoon villain niche TNG had placed them, they become much more interesting and less clichéd during the series' run. Nog's character arc especially is one of the best things about DS9, the scene where he confronts Sisko's implicit racism towards him is so powerful, and a very effective criticism against sci-fi writers' tendency to give each alien species just one dominant attribute (all Klingons are proud warriors, all Ferengi are shameless capitalists, etc). That scene madene cry, something I never could've imagined based on how TNG handled the Ferengi.

Xmessage

"that scene made me cry"

DS9, the show that gave you an episode where a Ferengi deals with his post-traumatic stress from combat in the holodeck and it ends up being one of the show's best.