Star Trek: Classic or Dud?

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.

let's pretend Whoopi was there all along, just never mentioned

TNG s1 e1 im going in ppl

blame the science lady who did the four-hour pod on picard if you have to blame anyone

Oh you love it.

not sure ive ever watched a tng thru to the end (and this was has data AND q) (tho no riker yet 👍🏽)

"i must be firm" as that guy says in that m.r.james story

the gang's all* here (and they're scarily young)

*nearly

IMO Encounter at Farpoint is a terrible entrypoint!

"i must be firm!"

ok so i liked this a lot less than i wanted to but i also disliked it a lot less than i wanted to

i guess three seasons of picard supplied an extremely low bar it quite easily cleared (as did dropping in million-yr-old mccoy)

who could resist the thrill of saucer section separation

wait til you see the *battle bridge*

I mean that eventually paid off in the first TNG movie at least. (Me being me when that happened I was all “Oh yeah they had a schematic about an emergency landing in the technical manual a couple of years back.”)

I dont mind Farpoint, its at least not as bad as Code of Honor, yeesh.

you can honestly skip ahead to

s02e09 - the measure of a man
s02e13 - time squared

and then just start with season three

i mean i know you (mark s) well enough to realize that you will revel in the awfulness, but damn that is a lot of reveling

Don’t forget “Q Who”

IIRC Contagion, Matter of Honour and Emissary are alright

Team assembled, shticks tagged: it’s their first outing so it’s fair enough ppl are wooden with one another, the ensemble hasn’t kicked in. Ppl are wooden with one another. If ST/OG was basically what if the space-future but horny, this begins more with the consequences of horny: i enjoying mysekf by the planet, but then remembered instances of regret in my life, and pain i have caused others

Picard: pre-Picard I had him filed as a brittle and dessicated old poot; but OK he doesn’t seem OLD on this watch (unlike me). HAS A PAST 1 (see below).
Riker: Kirk-repro except so far just frozen in the panicked headlights. HAS A PAST 2 (see below).
Data: No paintings so far 👎🏽
Deanna Troi: best actual acting in this first ep (= actually some actual acting, cheesy as it was). Seems like her actual on-board role and presence would create total havoc even if her skirt were less short but I am not Starfleet. HAS A PAST 1 (see above).
Worf: Bit of a shoot-first butt-hurt dumb-ass on first meet (Starfleet training didn’t take). Hence very tidily set up for more intensely front-and-centre dilemmas I guess.
Dr BC: best has-a-past pained-memories acting for sure. HAS A PAST 1 (see above).
Wesley: Charlie X but he’s going to be in every ep. Look I’m trying to erase my Will Wheaton lore, it’s not really fair on this fresh-faced kid. IS THAT PAST 1 (see above).
Geordi: hasn’t had much to do except announce his primary shtick.
Tasha Yar: NPC on this evidence.

Q: Just from clips and fragments down the years I greatly dislike Q — but he’s not yet written into his later form here, so it’s less mini-godly quirked japester pranks and some element of actual hard-to-read unbiddable menace (tho more in his costumes and the lines he’s given than his actual acting).

If there’s one thing I learned from three seasons of Picard it’s that Starfleet has literally no idea what it’s doing at any time. Would *I* have put the first-ever Starfleet Klingon on the same first voyage as the first-ever Starfleet semi-Betazoid *and* the first-ever Starfleet android model whatever? (I’d add in the entire Crusher family romance except I assume they actually know nothing about this.) Anyway seems like bad management! When it all goes pear-shaped how do you isolate the cause?

obviously bad management makes for good drama! so im stoked for the shenanigans!

s1 e2: the naked now

= i enjoying mysekf at the sex party, but then remembered instances of regret in my life, and ejection into raw space i have caused others

quite apart from everything else this is VERY slow

not quite picard-series slow but

ejection into raw space

This doesn't work, either in the 21st or 24th centuries.

thinking more abt this not-good early TNG story: so what's with roddenberry scheduling "naked time" and "naked now" as respectively fourth and third eps ever of their respective series? is it some kind of sort-hazing for the actors? this is how we'll find who they really are? and then adapt how we script the ensemble round what we've found? honesrtly it sweems much too early to be exploring everyone's intimate side -- we only just met!

contrasts: in "naked time" sulu gets his top off and grinningly waves a sword and his shiny torso around, this is fun and goofy (👍🏽); in "naked now" data and tasha engage in a "broad variety of pleasurings" behind closed doors, this is… less fun, for perverts and prudes alike! in general one of the (many) strengths of OG ST is that its main characters are often limber and athletic right there on screen on-screen, like pirates in a panto -- if they're not jumping around they're staggering when the ship takes incoming ect ect. but except for tasha's one unconvincing sashay-in-cruise-mode everyone in "naked now" is either just standing around nervelessly, sitting down (worf) or lying down (geordi): it is all very inert! (and so was the previous ep)

Otm

this is the ILX content I live for

Decisions like that can largely be chalked up to 'Roddenberry was an extremely horny guy,' no? Like the Ferengi were supposed to be giant-codpieced sex pirates if he had had his way.

code of honor lol

briefly excited when data brought in an ugly ceramic horse, in case he'd made it himself -- sadly it was just old earth art and the ligons were no more impressed than me

date disrespects the french language (calls it "ancient") and picard gets pissy

It's intriguing how little Picard's frenchness ever comes into play

I think it's "owns a winery" and that's it

Like all French people, Picard is obsessed with tea and Shakespeare.

hats are how you know they're not very advanced (committed to war)

― mark s, Wednesday, 19 April 2023 19:46 (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

this ep not beating the hats charges

it is in fact a very OG* ST-style story, awkwardly crowbarred into the new set-up (crew; gingerly feminist ethos)

it's also incredibly sluggish, leaving me much too much time to imagine what kinds of frenchness picard shd be manifesting to improve it (beret, string of onions, honh-i-honh…)

*old-schoolness amplified by the backdrop = just gorgeous orange-purple light instead of landscape orr distance

feel like the lounge shouldn't be just off the bridge

Perusing the list of ST:TNG characters on Wikipedia, I discovered that Patti Yasutake (aka Nurse Alyssa Ogawa in seasons 4-7) died a few weeks ago of lymphoma. I don't really remember the character tbh, sorry Patti. Anyway RIP

feel like the lounge shouldn't be just off the bridge

Keep an eye out for Jonathan Frakes stepping over his chair in order to sit in it because he had a bad back, maybe that's in later episodes though

Is Deanna the first betazoid (half betazoid, whatever) in Starfleet? I don't remember that being made much out of, had assumed there'd been others.

ambassador's daughter: it's the spock deal all over, so i'm calling it (starfleet is nepo city)

"i'm glad the academy is still teaching the strategies of sun tzu"

that strategy in full: "he will triumph who knows when the fight, and when not to fight"

no one in this "new" generation knows how to fight

in conclusion the ferengi needed more workshopping, it's good that the galaxy houses a tortellini-based lifeform tho

s1 e5: where no one has gone before

im going to borrow this form of etiquette: "my actual name is unpronounceable by humans"