Star Trek: Classic or Dud?

interesting re: Mulgrew and Ryan, the scenes they did as their relationship developed were really great and felt quite believable ! good acting

Was listening to a podcast the other day where they were talking about how these days if they're recommended a show and find out it's like 5 seasons, 10 eps it's "fuck no that's too much", but seven seasons of twenty five ep Star Trek shows they can just rewatch over and over. OTM imo.

I started bingeing TNG in 2015 and I'm... still on season 4? I think my rewatch is going to take longer than the actual show

I've been quicker with DS9 (on season 3 after a year)

What helps with Trek is that there are always skippable episodes and it's okay if you have a quick snooze during parts of them

Whereas several seasons of, say, The Americans is less time than rewatching Voyager but demands a lot more ATTENTION

Yeah, we're watching the Americans at the moment (a rewatch for me) and sometimes we have to take a break for a week or so because it's so GRIM. And then we have to watch the recaps so that we can remember where the hell we were. With TNG, as you say, you can wander in and out, fold laundry, cook dinner, have a nap, and still follow what's happening. And it doesn't matter because it all resets in the next episode anyway. Winner.

Yes. Feature not a bug, if it's still okay to use that cliche.

Big reason why Strange New Worlds hit so well. While there’s more active storylines across episodes for sure, each one had its self-contained story regardless, so in respects it nicely handles old and new.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJHn8-O7mJA

I like the times Picard in TNG has do things that seem out of character just because that's what the script says - like when he learns an Admiral ciommited graves offenses and he's just kind of like "yeesh! what were you thinking! instead of informing starflett
ALso Jameson reminds me of "Itchy" from teh wookie christmas special

Too Short a Season

Still slogging thru DS9 when I find time. Latest watch was "Time's Orphan" (I skipped "profit and lace" cos I hate Ferengi eps).

This epsiode was... alarming! Molly is pulled into some time portal, becomes a feral with no language or social skills (this makes no sense, she was EIGHT when this happened, not a baby), so their solution is not to resocialize her, not to give her therapy, not to hand her tp caring family or specialists but... send her back into the wormhole to deal with it on her own gbye Molly.

WAHT.

That’s life in the wormhole. I was watching DS nine when it was on Amazon prime video and it got wiskeda way to Paramount plus. I have paramount plus but I had long advertisements. I guess you have to pay even more to get the ads to go away?

No I'm watching it on netflix?

i’m still enjoying Voyager sbut we’re only early days, slowly into first third of s1

Every epsode I watch I’m newly horrified by Kess’s wig. It’s upsetting.

I love it whenever Janeway just says “fuck it, let’s blast them.” She’s very good.

Better be coffee in that nebula.

In terms of questionable DS9 decisions, remember when they made the atmosphere unliveable for Cardassians on some planet so they could switch it over for another planet the Cardassians had made uninhabitable for humans? Was totally convinced they were bluffing but no, they went full chemical warfare!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VMyePEToYE

I was surprised to learn industrial light and magic made a physical enterprise for STNG I assumed it was cgi - it seems like something to make easily with cgi

Not back in the mid-80s, even 'just' for TV.

Yeah, look how fake the ships in Babylon 5 look now, which started just as TNG was finishing

For a show that seemed like it had no aesthetic at the time, it has a hell of an aesthetic. So much more than “HR boardroom in space”. A too short period of time, post-80s macho but pre-90s irony.

LCARS is brilliant imo

Michael Okuda is still active on FB and regularly posts neat little design tidbits from over the years

I'm pretty sure the original STNG episodes had way cheesier effects too and got redone at some point?

I had this kind of apologist bullshit! Give me the original toasters

https://trekmovie.com/trek-remastered/tng-remastered/

I think that Mulgrew has been phoning in her lives on Prodigy but thankfully we got a body swap episode that was a lot of fun.

Jane ways

pic.twitter.com/KXQjQ3xTEV

— Star Trek Minus Context (@NoContextTrek) December 20, 2022

The latest episode of Prodigy is actually really good! Dark for a kids' show but also paid off the season-long arc in a way that I was complaining about earlier here (kinda? spoilerly)!

I've seen a reevaluation of Enterprise in the last several years, if not critically then along fans. But as someone who found Voyager fatally corny, should it still be a skip for me?

I've been watching enterprise recently (Pick TV) they are just about to finish season 4 (of 4). it's not holding my attention tbh even if the season 3 story-arch was an attempt at something new.

the sexing up of the female crew members is a bit blatant.

leeee you seem pretty into trek so i think it’d probably be worthwhile. and seasons 3-4 are pretty solid.

that said there are some v. dire episodes and koogs otm about the sexing up. as ever, the best characters are the non-humans

Yeah I could never get past how they treated the vulcan in Enterprise, all the gratuitous shower scenes and whatever in the few eps I saw. I also for some reason cannot accept Bakula as a Trek universe actor, I dont know why.

i don't think bakula was ideal, but also they made him really whiny about 'why won't the vulcans give us all their tech right now!'

that conflict was kinda interesting, but no one wants a whiny captain (and also the vulcans were right)

anyway if you like, this dude (who writes trek-associated fiction and has also held forth on all the other tv series) is in the midst of a rewatch; he's just finished the second season. obviously there are mad spoilers, but it might give you a sense of what is worthwhile

https://www.tor.com/series/star-trek-enterprise-rewatch

The combination of the casting of Bakula and Blalock (sexy Vulcan lady) were in fact two of the reasons I passed on the show when they announced it; a third reason was because of Trek saturation at the time, which maybe doesn't bode well for the billion series going on right now, or just shows how much I and/or the current TV landscape have changed in the last 25 years.

fwiw blalock was honestly great as a vulcan. none of the failings of the series have anything to do with her

agree with mookie, she did a good job doing the vulcan acting. it just wasn't well-serviced by a lot of the scripts/direction and the flat affect kind of comes off as dumb, given the material

Quantum Leap vs. Warp Speed.

At least they addressed the issue of body functions. I was always sad that we never saw a crew member have to pee or shit and what kind of high Teck toilets

do you think it's like harry potter and the transporter just beams the waste products out of them

Maybe that's why they have a whole person dedicated to being a transporter chief.

As a prank they probably beamed waste to nearby other starship's bridges. "A littel gift"

Did the Orville do a joke about that?

I know Firefly addressed the toilet issue, they just had hidden foldaway loos and used them fairly casually.

Isn't there a transporter mess up in the first Star Trek film that winds up with a crew member reappearing severely mangled. & is the transfer to the evil universe tied in with transporter misfiring?
hink I'd be thinking twice about having specific parts of me removed in a transporter process. In case they weren't as accurate as hoped and organs etc get removed along with their contents

Or would at least be wary of being a guinea pig in the refinement process if they did eventually get it right.

wait until you hear about tuvix

There was that time an extra Riker was created.

They should have beamed people into the holodeck, but made it seem like it was the transporter room, and then have the transporter controls operated by look-alikes of the people who have been beamed - and then they are like "WTF WE ACCIDENTALLY DUPLICATED OURSELVES"

I checked out the first season of Enterprise from the library, and watched the first episode (I forgot that they're double episodes). There's a real nascent MRA vibe simmering through it that left a pretty bad mouthfeel, like some kind of return of the repressed of humanity's worse impulses that also feels like resentment for having to adhere to '90s Trek values.

never ever say mouthfeel. especially when what you're talking about has nothing whatsoever to do with eating, or mouths

but tbh if you feel icky about that one then you should probably stop

it’s been a long road, gettin from there to here

Interesting thread revive timing, the algo just popped this up for my suggested viewing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VEZH8bqytA

last ever Enterprise today and they made it an TNG crossover which i guess shows how much faith they had in it