Star Trek: Classic or Dud?

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/beam-us-back-scotty/

I only got through a handful of Enterprise episodes, I just couldn't stand how enamored the show was of Trip.

Speaking of terrible Trek shows, how's the last season of Disco? Still a skip for someone who stopped hate-watching last season? I don't want to go into the thread for fear of spoilers (which I realize is kind of silly in this case).

I don't know what the level of showrunner drama is compared to earlier but it feels like a show that's not at all concerned with winning over people who didn't like any of the previous seasons the way Picard did in its last one.

would recommend continued hate-watching tbh - actually hate probably too strong a word - but i enjoy being lightly infuriated by it - has definitely settled down into a kind of “late Voyager” style where they are just doing it cos they do it and have surrendered any ambitions to shock or surprise

it feels like a show that's not at all concerned with winning over people who didn't like any of the previous seasons

See I dont agree, I feel like theyre pulling out way more fanservice in this season than ever? But, I already mentioned that in the DISCO thread.

finally they r making Disco for the true fans (ie nobody)

A very silly Enterprise ep featuring Jeffry Coombs AND Ethan Phillips as Ferengi. I am confused - I assume this is the first time humans meet Ferengi because in a prior ep at the monastery someone mentions 'em and all the humans shrug.

But wasnt there a terrible S1 episode of TNG where they meet Ferengi and act like they never have before?

the enterprise nx-01 (ffs why do i know that) encounters several things/people/species that based on lore it absolutely should not -- but they fudge it by never letting the things/people/species be named

it's garbage, but they either couldn't think up any better interlocutors or felt they needed half-assed references to known entities for people to watch

Yeah I get the impression one has to do a bit of hand-waving when it comes to how canon Enterprise was compared to everything else.

IIRC they get around it by never saying the word Ferengi, they're just an unnamed species of space pirate

Really too bad TNG didn't go with Roddenberry's concept of horny space pirates with enormous codpieces.

https://stephenliddell.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/lord-flashheart.jpg

woof!

jeffrey combs is what sold me on enterprise. prize ham

search function suggests i saw more of voyager in lockdown than i thought:

> daily voyager repeats now on season 3 in the UK.
> ― koogs, Friday, 6 August 2021

yesterday's episode was Tuvix, season S02E24, which i'm sure i saw as part of the above. so i can ignore the next 130 episodes 8)

Last night we got to an Enterprise ep I would have really enjoyed - basically seemed to be Event Horizon for Vulcans (they all went mad and killed each other).

Except, about 70% of the episode was full of intensely strong strobing light, in that bright blue-white spectrum. I am down with lurgy anyway but fuck me, it gave me a severe headache and I had to sit through a lot of the ep with my hands in front of my eyes. Fucking ruined it. Pity, its the one time Jolene Blalock got to actually act (her screaming fit right at the start was really full on).

Just finished Enterprise. Finally understand everyone being up in arms about the finale. What a weird way to end a show! Take everything away from the cast - they didn't even show Archer's speech! - make it all about fucking Frakes. Kill Trip. PAH.

RLM and the Salt Vampire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkqXLLg0VZw

Yoooo Lower Decks season 1 is free on YT (in the US): http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKfpV2bmlzOASQMcQIlmey9Xl41X2taAL

I was not prepared for how much I would love Lower Decks by the time I got to the fourth season. I think I could happily park it next to TNG/DS9/TOS as the top Treks.

<3

Have rewatched LD twice now, it is that much fun. Jack Quaid's Boimler screams crack me up every time they happen.

Sky Mix Freeview Channel 11 today

16:00 ST:TNG S01E01
17:00 ST:ENT S01E23
18:00 ST:DS9 S01E20
19:00 ST:VOY S05E03

Legend Freeview Channel 41
17:00 ST:TOS S01E28

of those i think TNG is the one i've seen least recently so i'm glad i caught the very start of a rerun. 176 or 178 episodes, at 5 a week is about 8 months.

I duno if I already said this but in AU most ST is still on Netflix. TOS, TAS, TNG, VOY, ENT and now S2 of Prodigy (but not S1, or LD? weird). Itd be nice if the movies were there too - they only have a few of the crappy Kelvin flicks, and I hated all of those.

ST:TNG S01E01, saucer is separating and O'Brien confirms something and picard says something that sounds a lot like "Thank you, Colm".

whole episode is a terrible start to this thing.

Data later addresses him as 'Con' so maybe his position ('Control'?)

Per Memory Alpha, it's conn, short for Flight Control Officer. But yes, Encounter at Farpoint is not good, I watched it once and never felt like subjecting myself to it again.

It's nautical and fits in with the general theme of the Enterpise being sea ship-like

Riker looks YOUNG

the bridge looks empty, there's like acres of carpet between the chair and the CONN and the CONN and the screen (oh, it says "Battle Bridge Conn" in the credits, Colm doesn't get a name)

is that deforest kelly? wow

i am older than picard was when he started (and when he finished)

time to keelhaul the lubbers imo

Yes, the old man is Deforest Kelley.

From what I remember Encounter at Farpoint had one of the few appearances of the "skant" uniform on a man:
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Starfleet_uniform_(2350s-2370s)#Skant

I could have sworn it also had mention of the elusive Cetacean ops - there was supposed to be a whole deck full of dolphins - but no, that was later. NB the dolphins were in a big tank of water. They didn't sit in Ten Forward with scuba tanks on their backs. They swam around in a big aquarium.

Would dolphins need scuba tanks in order to breathe outside water? They breathe air, don't they? Just like us. If they wanted to visit Ten Forward all they would need to do is put on some damp clothing. So it's a surprise we never saw them on the show. Imagine Deanna Troi having an affair with a dolphin! I bet someone on the writing team thought about that at least once. I can imagine Gerry Anderson Gene Roddenberry advocating for Marina Sirtis to wear a wetsuit and swim around with the dolphins in order to attract older male viewers. But the writers would have refused. I can't imagine the writers deliberately creating an episode purely as an excuse to get Marini Sirtis in gym gear. Trek was above all that.

This thread actually cleared up a little blip in my memory. I distinctly remember watching Encounter when it premiered on terrestrial TV, which was 26 September 1990 on BBC2:
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/BBC

I remember being incredibly frustrated because my friends with access to satellite TV raved about TNG - because they had access to the show in real time, and by 1990 the US broadcasts were up to "The Best of Both Worlds". But if you didn't have satellite TV you had to plough through the first two series of TNG, which was torture. Because it didn't get good until series three, and even then most episodes were still ropey. And yet according to Memory Alpha the show actually did premiere in the UK on BBC2. It hadn't been shown on satellite beforehand. So how come my friends had seen it already? Videotape? It vexes me.

But the point is that I remember enduring TNG rather than enjoying it. For two years, which is a long time when you're a kid. I understand why Gates McFadden was dropped from series two. From what I remember one of the producers made a pass at her, or something, and she said "no" and the producer said "no" and she was gone. But it's as if the producers also wanted to sabotage Diana Muldaur, because the whole thing with Dr Pulaski was that she hated Data - who was one of the most likeable characters. So through no fault of her own Diana Muldaur ended up lasting a single series... season... I can't bring myself to say season. I just can't.

To make things worse the BBC showed TNG until "The Best of Both Worlds" - and then stopped, presumably because they wanted to pay for Rhodes instead. So my satellite TV-owning friends were raving about "Unification" and "The Inner Light" while for two years I just stared at a silent empty box in the corner of our living room, waiting for Star Trek to come back. I had to invent my own stories, and that, dear reader, is how I became a writer.

And, yes, I'm going to finish now, when the BBC started showing TNG again it was two years later, and they started with the episode after "The Best of Both Worlds", which was a well-meaning but dull rape-survivor analogy set in France. Imagine trying to sustain an erection for two years, and then just as you're ready to get busy again you're confronted with "Family", which to be fair was well-meaning and remarkably brave... albeit that UFO did it first with "Confetti Check A-Okay", but still.

When I became a writer I deliberately tried to avoid nerdy subjects. I didn't want to be pigeonholed as a nerdy writer. It did me no good, so fuck you, the world. Yes, I am broadly familiar with Gerry Anderson's UFO. You can't hurt me any more!

This is quite the cri du coeur

I think I was trigged by the realisation that Rich Pelley, formerly of Your Sinclair, now gets to interview Juliette Binoche for The Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/mar/09/juliette-binoche-this-much-i-know-ask-steven-spielberg-if-he-hates-me

While Charlie Brooker's employment prospects are so poor he has to settle for... producing a string of extremely popular television shows in America. If only I had embraced my inner nerd when I was younger! I might nowadays write a blog about old-school Doctor Who where I argue that Colin Baker's tenure as The Doctor was the pinnacle of British television drama and by extension drama full stop.

But all that stuff about Star Trek was broadly true. In brief, if you didn't have satellite television, watching modern Trek in the UK was a maddening experience because you were constantly aware of the gulf between what was, and what was to be. It was like owning a Handspring Visor - you could see the future, and you could also see that the present was crap, but until the future arrived you had to cope. My generation had to cope.

episode 3 is the one where data and tasha get it on.

if you'd've asked i'd've said that i hadn't seen these since those original bbc2 6pm slots (like rishi, we didn't have sky). but they are too familiar for there to be a multi-decade gap.

That was The Naked Now. I too remember watching basically all of the first three series back when the BBC showed them in the early 1990s, and I haven't seen a single episode since then. Not one. I do remember that it felt like a bad idea to have a remake of a Trek episode so soon in the show's run, as if the writers didn't have any confidence. And I remember Data saying that he was fully functional in multiple pleasuring techniques, which was icky.

In fact I distinctly remember that line because the show was broadcast at tea-time on a Wednesday. It was roughly as embarrassing as the time I sat down with my family to watch a cool-looking obscure 1970s sci-fi film with Sean Connery - Zardoz. That film gets embarrassing really, really quickly. I remember saying to my mother "why is the penis evil, mother", and "why is that woman naked", and "is this what it's like when you're drunk".

I vaguely remember that "The Hunted", in series three, was pretty good - it was basically just an action drama, but it was well-made. My other recollections are that Wesley Crusher was nowhere near as ubiquitous as legend has it, although he tended to appear in the early episodes, so people who gave up on the show early on probably had the impression he was in it all the time. I remember the introduction of the Ferengi, who were initially presented as cannibalistic killers, but it was hard to take them seriously because they had big ears. I apologise to people who have big ears. It's me, not you.

And there was an episode that set up a big story arc with corruption in Starfleet, but it went nowhere. Starfleet was being infiltrated by alien parasites. The BBC had to tone the ending down because it was gross:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GRRGNJybQAEw2XZ.jpg

But it was never followed up. There was a clip episode as well, which was uncomfortably reminiscent of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, which also had a clip episode. And spandex space clothes. And apparently a few of the models were redressed for TNG.

I have a personal theory that Space: 1999 was far more influential than reputation suggests. Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Disney's The Black Hole were essentially feature-length Space: 1999 episodes. They had the same combination of grey lighting, spandex spacewear, crap attempts at philosophy, no humour whatsoever, flat characters, general downbeat 1970s air, backlit cel animation for computer displays etc. They even had the same "older captain paired with a younger, more action-packed co-star, and an attractive woman with special powers" dynamic. TNG is more or less the same.

Of course it could be that Space: 1999 itself was imitating something else, but I have the impression that at the very least Hollywood's modelmakers and special effects community paid attention to it. Famously ILM changed the Millennium Falcon because the original design looked too much like the Eagle transporter. I just like the idea that some of Space: 1999's DNA survived into the post-Star Wars age.

The alien worm episode was meant to kick off an arc that the writers' strike at the time basically killed; depending on what interviews you read, that arc may have been recycled into the Borg, or were meant to be actually in cahoots with the Borg. I just tend to ignore the entirety of the first season as far as canonicity goes.

ferengi. yeah, episode one mentions them eating someone but The Last Outpost is the first time we see them, deliberately large on the viewscreen. later on the planet they use weapons I've not seen since, electric pool noodles.

and that's pre-quark quark, obv

up to episode 13 now, i think, and they are still going through the tropes

utopian planet with a secret
holodeck 1940s san fran
mad robot
matriarchal society

I would watch a STNG where there is a whole season with the crew on a 1780's ship investigaint gmagical island and data is an angel or something

Last time on HMS Enterprise...

https://i.makeagif.com/media/10-31-2022/S2YRD5.gif

I love the alien worm episode as a contrast to modern Trek, Discovery would have spent a season and a half discovering the existence of the worms then another season and a half fighting them and the actual solution peters out into half an episode in the season finale.

So good though!

https://i.imgur.com/1Hq2hT7.jpg

This doesn’t even include the bit after where an alien bug comes out of his chest cavity or somesuch

Oh wait

https://64.media.tumblr.com/e118fab7df0eefa3655c2b0fa2eb0e7c/46c474f9803b9eee-a2/s250x400/1df1383837bbb8a8878df954a61679614d92758b.gif

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Nudity

I swear I wasn't being a pervert.

That gif of Beverley getting tossed off the ship, doesn't quite show it but if you look close you can see in the cutaway shot its not her - its her stunt double who happened to be Pat Tallman aka Lyta from Babylon 5.

annoyingly the episode guide for ST:TNG went from 'season pass' to 'individual episodes' and so the pvr neglected to record the last episode, 'Symbiosis', and i don't remember it from the description.

but Skin of Evil tonight. so long tasha, we hardly knew you.

tng predicts the death of tv around 2040

Well, that scratched an itch. The exploding alien parasite. Here in the UK that sequence was cut to ribbons. Off the top of my head - and bear in mind I watched the show once, when it was originally broadcast, and haven't seen a single episode since then - we just saw Picard and clean-shaven Riker firing at the screen, followed by a cut to a long shot of a smoking corpse. No face-melting.

Obviously the likes of The Boys and Invincible are far more graphic nowadays, but it's fascinating how close that clip is to the opening scene from Scanners. It's as if there was an arms race in the 1980s between videotape publishers, television, and Hollywood to push the envelope as far as it could go. With Trek caught awkwardly in the middle. In which respect the Borg were a godsend. They were creepy, but PG-creepy. A kind of PG version of Hellraiser.

I wonder if the writers were aware of Quatermass. That one episode had basically the same plot as Quatermass 2, but IN SPACE!, although part of Quatermass 2 actually was in space, so it was already in space. It was in a different part of space. Because it was already in space.

tng 201. pulaski has arrived, miles is back (i don't think he was in series 1 other than episode 1). 10-forward exists now. lots of changes.