Star Trek: Classic or Dud?

i voted for that one

I should've voted for it too!

can't quite remember how the one dude went from worshiping picard to shooting him two minutes later

Since the Picard was supposed to be all-powerful, an arrow wouldn't be able to wound him.

rewatched the motion picture last night and noticed how it has the best-looking enterprise interior but the worst uniforms

the scene in who watches the watchers where picard helps the alien villager along to a rational understanding of their equality -- "i do not fear you any longer" -- is as trek as you can get, i rly find it beautiful w the starfield slowly passing in the background.

as scripted it's the Federation Spreading Enlightenment but imo stewart puts over well that he is having a bewildering+transformative experience too. i'm not sure there are any better single scenes about contact even in darmok.

also am willing to admit that shatner in the same scene would have looked smug as fuck even before they started making out.

been watching TNG -- started with the ones on the top-40 list then stopped and went back to the beginning of season 3. too much at once really points out how hard it is to make things difficult for our heroes -- subspace interference/radiation storms/tachyon particles always messing with the warp drive amirite -- but it's pretty good. 'the inner light' made me cry

wesley still sux

lol in that interview when he can't remember Troi's name

What interview?

http://trekmovie.com/2009/08/26/rick-berman-talks-18-years-of-trek-in-extensive-oral-history

got my threads mixed up, this was posted in DS9 talk

Did anyone read '50 Year Mission: the first 25 years'?

"Rascals" -- not that bad! I could've done without any of the Ferengi stuff, though, and the episode would've been massively improved if it focused merely on the affected individuals. The Ro/Guinan scenes are lovely.

you didn't like #1 dad joke?

No, #1 dad joke was hilarious! I think that the mandate to have an episode centered around some kind of existential peril was a missed opportunity for more lolz.

Just watched "A Taste of Armageddon" -- so gonzo! It starts off with a provocative premise then dives off the deep end.

Amazingly beautiful guest actresses, though.

http://arstechnica.com/the-multiverse/2017/01/star-trek-discovery-gets-stuck-in-spacedock-for-at-least-a-little-longer/

Other than it being in the right timeline and having a female lead, none of the recent news about this show has me feeling optimistic.

A Taste of Armageddon could be remade nicely in the drone era

https://youtu.be/xd904wRUxcA

been watching season 2 of DS9. there's one episode ("Shadowplay") where they find a village where people keep disappearing. eventually they figure out that the entire village is a hologram, multiple generations of AI living out entire lifespans. they shut it down to reboot it and everyone disappears except for one person - the man who created it. rather than take him away or get him help they end up turning the hologram back on and just saying bye and leaving!

it was weird. it almost felt like they were enabling him. Trek is usually pretty adept at exploring "What does it mean to be human?" but not sure in this case it works very well.

would it really have been more satisfying for them to take him away, where he'd never be heard of again? recently saw 'future imperfect' (similar plot + riker is tricked into thinking he's 16 years in the future) where that indeed happens

idk, the entire franchise is kind of terrible at writing endings. there are obvious exceptions, but for the most part things just go back to the way they were 45 minutes earlier, with no ramifications

To play devil's advocate, I think that the episode is asserting that the old dude created sentient AI (which had the ability to reproduce and propagate itself), and that that community was a real community. Also, he was old, let him keep his quality of life!

i haven't seen that one but it sounds like a rework of tng's "the survivors" where they leave the magical old guy with his fake wife.

a rework of tng's "the survivors" where they leave the magical old guy with his fake wife

which sounds suspiciously like a rework of a TSOL episode

To play devil's advocate, I think that the episode is asserting that the old dude created sentient AI (which had the ability to reproduce and propagate itself), and that that community was a real community. Also, he was old, let him keep his quality of life!

oh yeah, i think Dax actually says all of that. and Odo even formed a strong friendship w that girl. maybe the prime directive now includes AI due to TNG's Exocomps incident.

maybe the prime directive now includes AI due to TNG's Exocomps incident.

TNG also broached AI sentience with Data in season 2's "Measure of a Man".

which sounds suspiciously like a rework of a TSOL episode

I watched the DS9 episode. It varied the formula up by having the creator not caring about the AI people, and having a series regular speak on the AI's behalf.

Odo spinning into a top at the end was a great moment!

Star Trek writers must really love that trope, I'm watching Enterprise for the first time, and I just saw an episode where they did the same plot once again, this time with Odo's actor playing a guy who lives with artificial versions of his old friends. It was a bit distracting to see him do another ST character than Odo... They also had the guy who played Weyoun do two different aliens within three episodes.

He was two different aliens in a single episode, too!

the more jeffrey combs the better i say

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/The_Dogs_of_War_(episode)

Weyoun is in my top 5 ST characters of all time.

which one?

I am fully on board with this:

http://io9.gizmodo.com/a-look-back-at-star-trek-nemesis-the-film-that-killed-1791577962

I hated Insurrection way more than Nemesis, which was merely boring.

otm, I think Insurrection was bad enough that people didn't want to give another movie a shot

Nemesis was still ehhh

Insurrection was merely a mediocore 2-part TNG episode with a bigger budget and some goofy stuff
Nemesis killed TNG with how bad it was

Yeah, Insurrection is pretty much the only ST movie that tries to do what it's parent series did instead of being an action movie or a space opera with ST characters. Whether or not that's a good idea is debatable, and it has some glaring flaws, but at least it's kinda charming and gives the actors room to do their thing. Whereas Nemesis has Picard and Data doing car chase scenes in the desert, fuck that shit!

for some reason my brain relocated the car chase to Insurrection

Insurrection includes Troi talking about her boobs firming up on the reverse-aging planet and Riker steering the Enterprise with a joystick

Riker steering the Enterprise with a joystick

How I loathed that.

A Gravis PC joystick, at that. Pretty sure I had the same joystick, and it wasn't even a good one!

watched the one where riker (presumably) gets it on with bebe neuwirth

really weird

lol which one is that, would watch

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/First_Contact_(episode)

http://www.treknews.net/2017/02/02/why-ds9-voyager-not-on-blu-ray-hd/

fascinating look at how ST spans the film/video divide and the problems that arise due to that

great super nerdy (and sadly disappointing) article, thanks
had no idea that amount of work went into the TNG remasters

I was eagerly awaiting for Deep Space Nine Blurays after TNG ones were finished, and was disappointed to learn the TNG ones sold too little, because it was made clear they couldn't afford to do the same kind of restoration for DS9 them. Especially considering that DS9 isn't quite as popular as TNG, so it'd sell even less. But it is sad to rewatch that series on Netflix and compare it to how good the TNG remastering looks. Hopefully one day the price of recreating/remastering all those special effects shots will become so low they can afford to do it, though apparently it's such a labour-intensive job I'm not sure if it'll ever happen.

I can't imagine Netflix or some other streaming service will provide the cash to remaster them either, unless they get exclusive rights to the series, and obviously Paramount ain't gonna give them those.

did you read the article? it'd be insanely expensive to do so for DS9, it was shot on a much lower resolution medium so it's not just the special effects -- they'd have to do upscaling on most of it because it was shot at a resolution not much different from what it was broadcast in

I mean, it was probably a net good because many of these shows were able to continue on at lower budget levels and editing was much easier, but the flip side is that the show is never going to look overall better than it did when originally broadcast. they could recreate all of the purely-animated scenes in high resolution, but then it'd cut to Sisko and the team looking like an upscaled DVD