Star Trek: Classic or Dud?

Never watched the original series much (wasn't alive at the time of the originals, don't recall seeing the reruns), but became a fan of the movies when they started. Fell into things fully when TNG began (watched from the first episode to the last) and still followed those films, though after starting with both Deep Space Nine and Voyager I gave them up fully in late 1995 and never looked back. Have a couple of the, ahem, 'technical manuals' around the place but that's about it -- the other books I've avoided. Have no costumes, have always avoided any kind of conventions general or specific, take cruel pleasure in laughing at Shatner's follies in the fifth movie, as should we all (the fake MST version is the only one to see, frankly).

Unsurprisingly, Picard is my fave (I was actually a Patrick Stewart fan already), but both Avery Brooks and Kate Mulgrew did excellent jobs in their Sisko and Janeway roles. Scott Bakula as Archer just scares me as a concept. TNG cast my favorite ensemble bunch, though I will give it up (oh yes) for George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, DeForest Kelley, Leonard Nimoy, Terri Farrell, Alexander Siddiq, Rene Auberjonois, Ethan Phillips, Robert Beltran and Robert Picardo. Data ist rad. And so forth.

note: star trek: the motion picture looked awful. but all the ones after that were awesome. how much cooler would next generation have been if they had those burgundy uniforms? kirk looked like the motherfucker in EVERY MOVIE wearing that shit.

ned: you think picard is tougher than picard. what. the. fuck. did you see wrath of khan? did you see that shit? he fucking kicked khan's fucking vinyl-chested ass. 'oh, yeah, you have genesis, khan but you don't have me. if you want me, you're going to have to come down here. you're GOING to HAVE to COME DOWN HERE!!!@#@@!$#'. you can say ANYTHING ELSE about kirk vs. picard, picard is smarter and more civil and professional or whatever the fuck, but nobody in their right fucking mind would say that he's tougher than motherfucking kirk. i am actually literally angry about this, so i need to calm down now. christ, i'm such a trekkie.

I thought it was Riker who had the twin. ;-)

that riker transporter twin episode is some stupid shit though.

original series: chekov...maybe, but that's stretching it. he kicks ass in the movies, he's just sort of useless on the show. but the original cast (chekov being a second series addition) is flawless.

next generation: RIKER RIKER RIKER, troi, that doctor who replaced crusher for one year, yar, data (come on, admit it. he's a super-advanced andriod and he can't understand common phrases? he thinks a 'lemon' is a literal lemon for god's sake. i'm sure the writers kissed each other for how fucking cute that was. anyway mudd's women were way smarter). and WESLEY. geordie would get on my nerves if he were played by anyone but le var burton, but he's a childhood icon and can therefore do no wrong.

deep space nine: the only memorable character besides the captain (who is cool) is quark the ferengi (who is also cool). but the rest aren't even fleshed-out enough to annoy me. wait, no, the short-haired chick with the ridges on her nose aggravates the piss out of me. and the doctor, god.

voyager: it has an indian. and an asian guy. and a black vulcan. and the captain is a woman. only as annoying as that new ghostbusters cartoon where one of the ghostbusters was in a wheelchair. like, what the hell?

evidence that kirk is the best captain: all series after that have had kirk ripoffs that are nowhere as good as kirk because they are not as cool as the godly shatner. like riker, or that really forgettable womanizer guy from voyager. i mean, what the hell, don't you just want to punch riker in the face? does anyone not want to? anyone?

All-time favorite episode is "Charlie X," where the Enterprise picks up some teenaged human waif from a planet, who then runs around the ship melting off the faces through telekinesis (?) of various crew members whenever he's teased or horny. What teenager couldn't identify with that?

I remembered TNG being great when I was 12, but I watched a few of them more recently and they were AWFUL, even the later ones. I think I might have quite liked Deep Space Nine later on, when they started having season-long story arcs, but I never saw enough of them to make sense of what was going on.

How come most of the crew are American yet NONE of them are chronically obese? (except Scotty who's - ahem - ""Scottish"")

In the 60s it was a bizarre mix of US military 'might is right' fascism and Hippy-dippy, 'why can't all nations hold hands?' idealism (though still managing to be sexist ~ Uhura the Captains secretary and Yoaman Rand (is that right) the Captains bit of [onboard] fluff. AND THATS IT SISTERS!)

It should have ended there as it ran out of ideas and people stopped watching it. But OH NO, they had to bring it back in the 80s with over-long, plodding bore-a-thon 'Next Generation' episodes that tapped into the touchy-feely / inner-child / New-Age nonsense that was on the go at the time. I mean - Counsellor Troi = WHY? She even sits on the bridge next to the Captain!! the message is in the 25th Century a bloody social worker is one of the most important jobs on a space ship.

But it was all so clinical and corperate and soul-less, advocating Pro-conformity and how you should be a good citizen. And too much sanctimonious liberal finger-wagging for my liking.

And it starred Whoopi Goldberg.

And how come all the baddies end up as the Federation's (UGH!) freind, taking tokenistic jobs as Navigators etc?

And why was it always so fucking BORING?

Another Star Trek I had over the other incarnations -- BETTER BACKGROUND MUSIC! Esp. that duh-dum-duh-dum-DUH-DUM-duh-dum theme whenever Kirk's ass was in deep ship.

On the other hand, Troi's mother was AWESOME.

And the original ST's music was Varese-influenced, hey? Hmmmm ... never knew that! Maybe I should go over to that "Who Opened Your Ears" thread in ILM and change an answer or two of mine :-)

Troi's mom was cooler than Troi, not more attractive! Aigh, my eyes!

troi: not attractive.

crusher: nuh-uh.

troi's mom: uh.

that guy who was troi's mom's butler or something and was the guy who played lurch in the addams family movies: mrowr.

question: who liked first contact? it was like a next generation episode, only like, cool. plus, supercool supporting cast with alfre woodard and the farmer guy from babe.

someone start a star wars thread so i can bitch about how much that sucks except for empire strikes back.

hey i just remembered something else i liked in next generation, although it's from that bastard movie where kirk dies (falling off a walkway! the fuck? he's saved the universe like two hundred times and he falls of a walkway and dies? fuck). um anyway, i liked when data said 'shit'.

Andrew L has not mentioned his great expertness in this area, for some reason. I know about it because I very briefly worked under him on a Star Trek magazine!

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

faith of the heart iirc

the last Enterprise episode is... something

I want to see FLintstone STar Trek like their ship is stone and pterodactyls work the transporter

that Star Trek fan episode is unnerving to watch - it's serious, I guess, but the acting and the way the audio is mixed makes me think they're going to break into MST3K parody at any second

Episode 2: Almost competent, with a familiar Trek formula except instead of the technobabble deus ex machina, it's just a babble deus ex machina, which was incredibly anticlimactic (watching Hoshi grunt at the viewscreen and then things just work out was boring).

Mouthfeel: undifferentiated and bland.

onleee you could get away with such things

COunsellor Trois hair was stupid in the first season like a flower pot on head

agree

she was always styled like one step away from “magician’s assistant”

Lol

The future Trek envisioned: classic

The future as executed by Trek: mixed

Troi’s version of the Riker beard effect is, she gets better when she can’t be bothered to do the accent anymore.

Troi is great in the books. And even Lxwanna works in DS9. From the interviews, you get the sense Sirtis would have been much better off if she’d just played her as herself.

Or if she’d been trusted to do so.

Troi was a terribly-written character, she didn’t have a lot to work with

Basically any the female character on TNG wasn't well-served by the writing, maybe Pulaski excepted (though I haven't watched season 2 in ages).

Sirtis definitely got frustrated with how her character was treated. She described a lovely scene where she had a conversation with Scotty in "Relics" which got cut - I imagine that's not the only time something like that happened.

Eposode 3: I'm starting to cotton onto how Enterprise is Star Trek: This Is Why We Have Rules, but can they do it in a less insultingly stupid way?

short answer is no

Strange New Worlds is kind of the anti-Enterprise show in that it doesn’t take the characters for granted and Enterprise just has these cut-outs it repeatedly slams against the weak plots

The accuracy

where is the lie

Was STNG Enterprise the only ship that has a psychologist as a bridge officer? Eventually Troi just wears a regular uniform and it's somehow even sexier

DS9 eventually has one, although technically that's a station.

I don't could DS9 as a ship and I never will. That's why Ds( missed the bite - who can care about a floating metal crab with visitors? THen they were like "OH by the way now Sisko became Jesus" - I knwo I'll take a lot of flack for this as ds9 has many devotees but I'm ready

MOBY DS9

who can care about a floating metal crab with visitors?

...you put it like that.

Rewatching season two of TNG again. Pulaski is horrible. She doesn’t like using the transporter and insists on using a shuttlecraft. REMIND YOU OF SOMEONE?? Just finished the Wesley-crushes-on-a-shapeshifter episode and the Hotel Royale episode, good fun! I just love when Wesley’s crush morphs into a big alien gorilla. The “actors in goofy alien costumes” look is one of the best parts of the show, which is why I enjoyed “Lonely Among Us” (the Anticans and the Selay) and “Too Short a Season” (the old admiral gets younger and younger) better than most.

who can care about a floating metal crab with visitors? THen they were like "OH by the way now Sisko became Jesus"
DS9 - floating space can next to a planet, Sisko Jesus, wormhole adjacent for adventures.
Bab5 - floating space can next to a planet, Sheridan Jesus, jumpgate wormhole adjacent for adventures.

I don't could DS9 as a ship and I never will

you never defiant

wesley airlock when? never done. big failure

OK I kinda like ds9 but I like controversy too

I'd like to see a DS9 Red Dwarf crossover. The ships goes into a time warp and ends up at ds9 throwin it back with shiny Quark

legend channel is showing o/g and im watching it bit by bit in random order (this ep is the one with apollo)

"you seem wise for a woman" says the annoying but also horny greek god to the lady officer* who you can barely see thru the wildly vaselined lens**

*scotty also has his eye on her
**did any other show of the time do this? ans must be yes but i honestly don't recall being struck by it so much and so often lol

ppl whose decisions have been really very iffy so far in this story: kirk, spock, bones, scotty, chekov

also spock seems to be flirting w/uhura, was that a thing?

Um…yes.

she seemed extremely surprised

Spock thinking "It is logical that a greek god is horny"

always found the description of the unworshipped gods physically disintegrating from ennui kind of affecting

I'm gonna make a thread of actors who appeared on Star Trek and also on The Golden Girls because that seems like a fun thing to do. 🧵

— Will Burrows 🍞🌹 (@dwight_tokem) January 16, 2023

ILX0r Josefa basically did the same thing on another thread with respect to Star Trek: TOS and Hawaii Five-0 iirc.

I believe there may have been mention of Mannix as well.

Watched episode 4 (where Trip gets pregnant), which is actually kind of amusing in a lowered expectations kind of way (and is maybe only half as offensive as the Quark gender swap episode).