Star Trek: Classic or Dud?

I remembered TNG being great when I was 12, but I watched a few of them more recently and they were AWFUL, even the later ones. I think I might have quite liked Deep Space Nine later on, when they started having season-long story arcs, but I never saw enough of them to make sense of what was going on.

How come most of the crew are American yet NONE of them are chronically obese? (except Scotty who's - ahem - ""Scottish"")

In the 60s it was a bizarre mix of US military 'might is right' fascism and Hippy-dippy, 'why can't all nations hold hands?' idealism (though still managing to be sexist ~ Uhura the Captains secretary and Yoaman Rand (is that right) the Captains bit of [onboard] fluff. AND THATS IT SISTERS!)

It should have ended there as it ran out of ideas and people stopped watching it. But OH NO, they had to bring it back in the 80s with over-long, plodding bore-a-thon 'Next Generation' episodes that tapped into the touchy-feely / inner-child / New-Age nonsense that was on the go at the time. I mean - Counsellor Troi = WHY? She even sits on the bridge next to the Captain!! the message is in the 25th Century a bloody social worker is one of the most important jobs on a space ship.

But it was all so clinical and corperate and soul-less, advocating Pro-conformity and how you should be a good citizen. And too much sanctimonious liberal finger-wagging for my liking.

And it starred Whoopi Goldberg.

And how come all the baddies end up as the Federation's (UGH!) freind, taking tokenistic jobs as Navigators etc?

And why was it always so fucking BORING?

Another Star Trek I had over the other incarnations -- BETTER BACKGROUND MUSIC! Esp. that duh-dum-duh-dum-DUH-DUM-duh-dum theme whenever Kirk's ass was in deep ship.

On the other hand, Troi's mother was AWESOME.

And the original ST's music was Varese-influenced, hey? Hmmmm ... never knew that! Maybe I should go over to that "Who Opened Your Ears" thread in ILM and change an answer or two of mine :-)

Troi's mom was cooler than Troi, not more attractive! Aigh, my eyes!

troi: not attractive.

crusher: nuh-uh.

troi's mom: uh.

that guy who was troi's mom's butler or something and was the guy who played lurch in the addams family movies: mrowr.

question: who liked first contact? it was like a next generation episode, only like, cool. plus, supercool supporting cast with alfre woodard and the farmer guy from babe.

someone start a star wars thread so i can bitch about how much that sucks except for empire strikes back.

hey i just remembered something else i liked in next generation, although it's from that bastard movie where kirk dies (falling off a walkway! the fuck? he's saved the universe like two hundred times and he falls of a walkway and dies? fuck). um anyway, i liked when data said 'shit'.

Andrew L has not mentioned his great expertness in this area, for some reason. I know about it because I very briefly worked under him on a Star Trek magazine!

Enterprise - trip is annoying but that vulcan's fit.

first series: like what i haf seen but haven't watched many episodes.

Next generation: only reached goodeness after the Borg came in the picture.

Deep space nine: deeply flawed (a space station in the middle of nowhere and they had to make a war to make it interesting so it had problems just like next generation) though I did watch most of it.

Voyager: the absolute fucking classic. They are stranded and haf to go back but they explore the other side of the quadrant which means all sorts of storylines, (this aspect is exploited to the full) and if that isn't enough then here are the words that settle this argument.

SEVEN OF NINE.

The woman of my dreams (Troi is an ugly witch compared to my seven). She's like Data (both trying to gain 'humanity') but she's a woman. And what a woman. Then the doctor who i think is rilly rilly funny too.

I was pissed off that my brother missed taping two episodes and I made him aware of that to say the least(only six were taped, I had to spend all night watching them on the day i got back from canada and it was time well spent though seven is breaking my heart trying to 'get' chakotay).

(Fun fact: The student services building at my school is called the William Shatner building & even has the Shatner Ballroom. Classic!)

DO YOU SEE!!?

heh. Alex (my brother's name) would never say 'improv' as he doesn't know what that is. or wants to know.

Good: Wrath Of Khan, The Voyage Home (time travel, whales), The Undiscovered Country (Peace with the Klingons), First Contact (The Borg hit Earth), hopefully Nemesis

Bad: Star Trek: the Motionless Picture, The Search For Spock, The Final Frontier (Crazy Vulcan searches for God), Generations (Malcom MacDowell froths, Kirk dies), Insurrections (not that terrible, just a double length TNG episode).

Having finally seen the trailer, my hopes for the film are now quite high.

ARGH. Now I'm massively disappointed as well!

So while I can see the intrinsic appeal of the attractiveness of the women in late STrek progs, I can't see it as a tribute to the imagination, skill and integrity of the programme makers.

There is hope left in this sad world.

Riker and Troi get married in the new movie...

And of course:

http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~pg02/khan.png

"KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNN!!!!!!"

http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~lthomas/nerd.jpg

(the first two seasons are *dire* tho)

tbf there are a tiny handful of decent ones but jfc the one with padma lakshmi! the one where phlox condemns a race to death in the name of non-interference! the one where trip gets (lol!) pregnant! the one where archer bitches about the vulcans treating him like a child (which is all of them, because he acts like a child and they are right to respond in kind)!

Can you recommend a good skip guide? The couple that I found have been uniformly inept at weeding out bad episodes.

I'd first check out Carbon Creek as a test to see how charming you find the more whimsical episodes might be, but a true skip guide might end up saying skip all of it.

I don't know if Enterprise ever really got to a place where it had good episodes, but they found their stride in the last season when they just fully embraced being a fanfic show. The Brent Spiner episodes, the mirror episodes, the Vulcan arcs aren't really "good" but they have a momentum and sense of fun that was missing with all the time war 9/11 stuff.

I was really disappointed by how bland Bakula was in Enterprise, especially since I was a huge QL fan. It feels very much like a Dubya-era show, with characters loudly praising "human" (read: American) ingenuity; I can remember a specific episode which had disembodied aliens talking about how "special" humans are, ick. And the attempts at being "sexy" are mortifying.

It had good episodes though, a personal favourite being "Dead Stop", set on a creepy automated station. And even though they shouldn't have gone near The Borg, "Regeneration" actually made them scary again, maybe for the first time since Q Who/BOBW.

IMDb episode rating/reviews served as a decent ship guide on my recent rewatch (1st since air dates), & in the end I thought it was pretty entertaining. Bakula was wooden and that was a bummer, but he sure liked to give the sweet beagle pup cheese and bounce around a volleyball and polo equipment.

It feels very much like a Dubya-era show, with characters loudly praising "human" (read: American) ingenuity

Yup. There's a recap podcast, Temporal Culture War, and this is very much their main take on that show.

I have seen Carbon Creek and really enjoyed it! But it's been the only one episode so far that's risen above tolerable. The last episode I saw was the Hoshi one that's a worse option version of Next Phase (Geordi and Ro become ghosts).

I'll give that a listen Daniel thanks. One thing that really gives the show's mentality away is the opening sequence. I do like it, and don't even mind the theme song, but it's ALL American stuff! I wonder if they considered including Von Braun in that montage....

Weren't there some caravels in there at the start? But yeah, mostly otm.

quick/dirty review of notable episodes from enterprise's first two seasons:

• s01e01 broken bough (actually kind of decent for a trek premiere; temporal cold war is silly tho)
• s01e07 the andorian incident (vulcans: c/d?)
• s01e11 cold front (stupid temporal cold war but decent episode)
• s01e19 acquisition (bad, but maybe you like ferengi episodes)
• s01e21 detained (guest stars dean stockwell)
• s01e24 desert crossing (guest stars clancy brown)
• s02e02 carbon creek (flashback vulcan/pittsburgh content)
• s02e04 dead stop (nice horror episode)
• s02e05 a night in sickbay (worst episode of the entire series just in case you want to hatewatch)
• s02e06 marauders (cheap seven samurai ripoff)
• s02e07 the seventh (solid t'pol episode, guest stars bruce davison)
• s02e11 precious cargo (second-worst episode of the entire series just in case you want to hatewatch; guest stars padma lakshmi and wow is she bad)
• s02e12 the catwalk (crew has to bunker down in the nacelles due to a radiation storm; pretty decent)
• s02e13 dawn (the inevitable ENEMY MINE episode; no worse than the geordi TNG version, better than the ortegas SNW version)
• s02e16 future tense (our heroes try to salvage a spaceship from . . . THE FUTURE?!?! makes no sense but i liked it)
• s02e19 judgment (klingons put archer on trial; j.g. hertzler is his lawyer. okay, but hertzler is of course great, and maybe you're into klingons)
• s02e22 cogenitor (trek--specifically trip--takes on gender in interspecies relations, fails horribly)
• s02e23 regeneration (oh no the borg! this was good, actually)
• so2e26 the expanse (not great but sets up the entire next season; rip florida)

season four is better if you like Intense Fan Service. hardly necessary but probably worth watching

archer was such a crap character (they apparently made him captain because he was a good test pilot and his daddy built warp drives?) and bakula was so wooden playing him that it's astonishing to me people are trying to stir up a Federation President Archer series. yet another job he's unqualified for

hoshi/merriweather are barely acknowledged (with one nice exception in s04)

reed: annoying af. trip tucker: bland, fine, whatever . . . except for the relentlessness of his made-up accent

best characters, as ever, are the Others: t'pol and phlox. and man, the shit they made jolene blaylock do is absurd

Did they deliberately pick an actor (Trip) who looked like George Bush?

Maybe you have to be from the UK, but I didn't mind Reed, having some leftover warmth from watching him in "Desmond's"

Scott Bakula is very "we wanted Mark Harmon but he said no"

Overall, at the time anyway, as a Trek family who enjoyed Voyager, we totally noped out of this show after the pilot

Agree it just felt too AMURRICAN in a way Trek never felt before

i wonder if you wouldn't mind awfully if i could sacrifice myself for the good of the crew, captain

I don't actively like Reed but still prefer him to Trip.

The skip guide I was following recommended Congenitor but then when I looked at its IMDB page immediately knew it would not be for me.

See I never had a issue with Bakula's acting in ENT. Also, I liked the whole temporal cold war story. I especially liked that it got tied later on to Discovery!

Also ENT wins purely for this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OKWmtQCde0

i feel like the temporal cold war *could* have been good, maybe? but it never made any sense! why does silik sometimes help the humans and sometimes attack them? who is his boss, the mysterious future guy who can't actually time travel but can nevertheless fuck with silik's genetic enhancements? feel like it simply never went anywhere before petering out

imo the SNW ep with la'an and alternate-kirk going back to toronto did that sort of thing much better

also that voyager ep with bruce mcgill

oh raffi

https://i.postimg.cc/zXMkqcMt/bafkreihqiazkskrbfg4wxh2w36kla76rt2f2pdgwnmyohccuywi2z33yzi.jpg

(still better than the other raffi tho)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0sjDkoNgfY

Academy premiere is free on YouTube (at least in the US).

‘Arry Potter you’re an Ensign

Ok that was actually really good!

These are a fucking trip:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsNOqjr2meCbx6zlXTT3yw5z8-Ln1A8s-

Fixed link with the - at the end

What is this? Is it the Trek equivalent of one of those "Jimi and Kurt, jamming in the afterlife" Facebook posts?

I liked the grimy shot of robots cleaning the old Enterprise off the planet floor

They're more official than random slop, and instead of being purely gen AI, they use real actors wearing "digital prosthetics" to look like 90s Shatner.

Wonder what it even takes to get licensing from Paramount after Axanar.

Ah, that sight has a whole bunch of stuff related to The Roddenberry Archive.

yes this was produced by the roddenberry archive and and Shatner and Nimoy's estate were involved. I think it was primarily made as a demo of the OTOY digital technology.

as far as the story motivation, they felt it was lame that Spock died offscreen in Beyond (which I never watched) and the idea is that this would take place after Kirk's death in Generations in an afterlife where timelines are nebulous. I think it succeeds and is quite touching.