Star Trek: Classic or Dud?

at some point in TNG, "new life and new civilizations" became "evil aliens that like to fuck with humans"

Really? What examples are there of this besides the Borg? Because in most cases the conflicts rose from misunderstandings and/or alien customs, not from anyone being evil. Even the Borg were eventually humanised in "I, Borg" and "Descent".

I'm on season 2 now and just watched this very awkward episode.

https://m0vie.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/tng-theoutrageousokona91.jpg

"Now, that's sex appeal."

A whole subplot about Data's yearning to learn the nuances of 80s stand-up comedy.

at some point in TNG, "new life and new civilizations" became "evil aliens that like to fuck with humans"

so far the evil ones are mostly people/aliens they already know. last entirely new alien episode i saw was "The Tin Man" which was about them doing everything they could to preserve new life form that has taken the shape of a spaceship. the Borg seems to really be the only wholly evil aliens in it. but i'm halfway through season 4 maybe this will change.

I'm on season 2 now and just watched this very awkward episode.

season 2 has some clunkers. the first one with Troi's mom is pretty bad too but the one where Data tries learning how to be a comedian from Joe Piscopo is all-time worst.

fwiwi i thought having a Star Wars-style dashing space pirate aboard the stuffy Enterprise was funny/interesting

there's def some kind of generational split between TNG and TOS fandom. TNG will always be second-rate to me. It's okay and occasionally great but its flaws are much more glaring and less tolerable.

The Borg aren't evil! Just amoral.

well yeah evil in the subjective sense. maybe in the same way you wouldn't think twice about killing a bug.

http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/images/9/91/Jerry_Lewis_impersonation.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20121213025929&path-prefix=en

Huh, I didn't recognize Teri Hatcher in that episode.

http://cdn3.whatculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/teri-hatcher-trek.png

teri hatcher had some singular guest roles for a young me back in the day (TNG, night court, seinfeld)

Hey so I completely misremembered the responses to my idea about floating a an All-Treks ballot pole, are our Trekkies Trekkers still interested in one?

Jeebus, *poll.

like, an episode poll?

Yes!

An episode pole!

sure, I'd vote. My ballot would be almost entirely TOS though, there's really only a handful of TNG episodes I would single out and everything after that is p much garbage

That's fine, I'll probably just throw your ballot out. ^_^

i'm in

i'd probably participate in that though my ballot would be very skewed towards tng and ds9 since i haven't seen nearly as much of the others

i think i already have a ranked list somewhere of tos episodes :/

will happily share the morbs role with shakey (and possibly morbs?)

i totally forgot until a minute ago that there was another garbage star trek movie coming out. are they going to put that particular reboot to sleep after this one?

I doubt it, unless this one bombs. The reboot movies have been profitable so far.

this looks like the 'star trek: nemesis' of this series, though i'm not sure that holds up bc there's yet to be a 'first contact'

I'd participate solely to counteract the predominantly TOS ballots.

o i'm p sure they'd be in the extreme minority.

anyway def voting for darmok and ship in a bottle!

those are my tng favs too

IF I
COULD PUT
A SHIP
IN A BOTTLE...

Really? What examples are there of this besides the Borg? Because in most cases the conflicts rose from misunderstandings and/or alien customs, not from anyone being evil. Even the Borg were eventually humanised in "I, Borg" and "Descent".

It starts in season 4, and it's not every episode. In S4 Cardassians were introduced. They always seem on the verge of being non-evil, but then it's always a trick. Some other episodes I'm thinking of:

Identity Crisis (Braga). Geordi does a Hologram sim, discovers an extra shadow, it's alien monsters, they turn him into a lizard

The Game (Braga). Everyone is playing Angry Birds. It's a plot by evil aliens.

Time's Arrow. After an intriguing first part, it turns out to be evil aliens sucking the life force out of people. Oh, and Mark Twain.

Schisms (Braga). The alien abduction episode that had just been mentioned before my comment.

Aquiel (Braga & Moore). Geordi falls in love by watching tapes of a murder suspect. It turns out the murderer was an evil alien posing as a dog.

There were some season 1 aliens that could also qualify -- the tar monster that killed Tasha and the bug monsters taking over Starfleet. Season 1 was shit and they shouldn't have returned to these plots.

ahahah oh god i forgot that the DOG was the murderer in that one

Season 2 of TNG was when the Writer's Strike hit, right?

xxp I was just sad that more wasn't made of Riker and Worf getting probed, though the disappointment was off-set by the Data poetry reading and Worf getting a haircut and nearly murdering the (admittedly annoying) barber.

I've been watching Voyager from the beginning over the last some months, and tbh I like it more than I ever did seeing it in bits and pieces on TV. There's at least something of a storyline. The technobabble and "hoopla, we magically fixed this dire situation within one episode" thing grates, but every Trek series does this, so cant complain there.

Its been said before, but "The Gift", where Kes goes all psionic and "becomes" and disappears, was a straightup ripoff of "Mind War" from S1 of Babylon 5.

Babylon whatnow?

i don't think I have it in me to do a full watch through of Voyager right after finishing ds9 but i do want to hit some of the highlights whatever those may be

Its patchy, which everyone's said above (if not outright panned it, which.. eh? Its no better or worse than any other series).

Leeee: I am assuming yr kidding.

Its no better or worse than any other series

...

Any other trek series I meant, in the sense they all use technobabble, they all solve dire situations neatly within an episode (mostly, borg shit aside), they all have pretty camp OTT acting...

Dont think this is me knocking the show! But I do think Bab5 did long form storytelling and drama WAY better (sadly this gets lost on many people cos they go "ewww the effects look so dated")

Voyager is probably better than Enterprise! I don't know for sure, I didn't watch Enterprise.

There are probably like 10 good Voyager episodes, "The Thaw", the first Species 8172 two parter, and a bunch of Doc/7 stories.

a blank screen is better than Enterprise

xp

there isn't actually a lot of technobabble in tos. the occasional remark about shield fluctuations sure and lots of aliens with strange properties spock affects in the third act to fully understand, but nothing like the every-single-episode scene in tng where geordie and someone else recommend absolute nonsense to each other for like ten minutes until the episode's token peril is resolved. i'm not even sure tos (show not movies) has "dilithium" in it, tho i've probably just forgotten its appearances in the later episodes (for a while it's just lithium).

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

^^^

you guys have weirdly selective memories about TOS afaict

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