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!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rNoR8jnPRU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oz1c1xdoUFc

I like how Patrick Stewart de-emphasizes it most of the time.

To celebrate #StarTrekUnited, stream Star Trek's most culturally impactful episodes FREE at the locations below:
- https://t.co/pyZ9OyqyUQ: https://t.co/mYgkivaH32
- CBS: https://t.co/Z3Y1KT4edN
- Twitch: https://t.co/1S7XpZcQuE
- PlutoTV: https://t.co/gGJJMKX82x pic.twitter.com/rnU01MuWXI

— CBS All Access (@CBSAllAccess) June 17, 2020

personally i always thought the one where spock mind-melds with the horta was super culturally impactful

Devil in the Dark would be on my list, too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qSVb9bQeqM

https://www.startrek.com/news/star-trek-lower-decks-sets-release-date

I think at some point I'll order CBS for a month and binge all the ST content at once.

it takes a lot longer than a month to do them all

did they really need to name their sitcom after my favorite tng episode

And now the trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3RkBKedKWw

I loled in a few places, I'll admit.

patrick stewart is 80 today

so there's a guy on youtube who made a trilogy of three hour long star trek videos, voiced entirely by himself, and they all feature holodeck scenes in his meticulous recreations of price is right sets pic.twitter.com/iFT4vxhsfI

— cuggy (@frknbns) July 12, 2020

Wow. I couldn’t locate the full length videos.

here's the first one, from the twitter thread
https://youtu.be/sGZDwzphAbQ

So the re-run of the Original Series has just finished, so many episodes I hadn't seen before, not many of them very good, the third season as a whole was pretty feeble.

https://i0.wp.com/www.tor.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/st-intruder21.jpg

... I suspect they're going to re-run the whole thing again from tomorrow.

They just loop them, they've already shown them all at least twice. Quite right too, beats all the shitty made for TV lol cgi monster movies that make up most of the rest of their daytime schedule

Every single day, immediately after Star Trek, there's a cheap crappy disaster movie made within the last decade, usually within the last 5 years, there's thousands of the fuckers!

South Park, my ass

https://www.americannamesociety.org/the-before-time-from-star-trek-to-real-life/

I rewatched "Cause and Effect" and it kind of bummed me out thinking that just after the episode ends they're going to tell Kelsey Grammer and his crew that they're 80 years in the future and everyone they've ever known is dead. Would have been interesting if they'd done anything to follow up on that.

Actually I guess given the extended lifetimes that's not true, but they've been presumed dead in their loved ones' minds for 75 years probably.

Anyone watch Lower Decks yet?

I never started watching ST:TNG until season 3 or 4 when it originally aired, but I've started rewatching from the beginning on Netflix. "Encounter at Farpoint" is decent, but the two after that are so terrible that I'm really glad I already know it gets significantly better. I know the rest of S1 is pretty rough going too.

Some of my favorite scenes are from the worst episodes:

Gene Roddenberry, Barrie Ingham, and Patrick Stewart sing Irish song "Phil The Fluters Ball" during the filming of "Up the Long Ladder." Michael Dorn tries his best. #StarTrek #StPatricksDay pic.twitter.com/YxBcKxqJUe

— TrekCore.com ➡️Spoilers After Saturday @ 9AM ET⬅️ (@TrekCore) March 17, 2018

https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/w7w6c2pgzye.png

x-post

Season 1 is fascinatingly ropey and for the most part quite entertaining if you don't mind that sort of thing. "11001001" is a fun Riker/Picard hangout episode - it's actually quite rare to see them together, being informal! - and "Consipiracy" at the end of the season is a total classic, with one of the most WTF moments in the history of Trek (you'll know it when you see it).

I thought this most recent revive was going to be about this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-hGLHOzvgs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jR7QsGNCU0

Of course Quentin Tarantino's Star Trek was based on the old-timey gangster one
https://news.avclub.com/of-course-quentin-tarantinos-star-trek-was-based-on-the-1844660190

FWIW I mildly enjoyed Lower Decks, unexpected gore and all.

CBS AA had been posting a bunch of Short Treks and the first episode of
Lower Decks on YouTube.

Latest episode of LD the best one so far.

Latest episode of LD the best one so far.

― Ruth Bae Ginsburg (Leee), Sunday, August 23, 2020 9:53 AM bookmarkflaglink

This again. The show seems to be hitting its stride; each episode has been better than the last and the sly references were great.

And to put in some more effort to selling the show: It's an antidote to the vogue of current Trek to pitch everything at the most galaxy-encompassing levels, where so much of what Captain X does is quadrant-defining. Granted, that's happened with every iteration of Trek (in my favorite series, the Captain is an actual messiah), but I think this is where the episodic nature of pre-2010s Trek helps out -- mythology/arc episodes were broken up with standalones (which may still center around galaxy-threatening conflicts). With Disco and Picard, though, nearly every episode sets phasers to EPICOMGWTF! and center around the same plot.

So a show about Starfleet nerds and underachievers is kind of perfect. It's frivolous and lighthearted, but it's not trashy; it's been investing Boimler and Mariner with some real character work, as much as you can get away with in a 20-something minute cartoon that drops references to double-fisted punches.

I'm glad to hear LD isn't trashy. That's the last thing I want from Trek.

It’s a little trashy; at least as far as the animation and voice acting conjures American Dad.

yeah that's what steered me off it... I may check it out yet

we have been watching LD, up until this last week’s ep i was only doing so grudgingly but it it is improving & i enjoyed it for the first time

mr veg finds it all deeply nerdy therefore v enjoyable

We've been slowly going through Voyager, episode by episode. It's been very weird but there are some excellent episodes

I love voyager, no apols
Paris, Kim and Torres are super dud of course

I think Chakotay is the one I dislike the most.

Seven of Nine is my favorite at the moment, we're in season 4 after the Hirogen holodeck/WW2 kerfuffle.

And I should say that I dislike Chakotay the most because of the truly racist way he's written, not anything else about his character, which is fine.

I dislike Paris and Torres, but have a soft spot for Kim, even tho it turns out he was the reason Kes got axed from the show...

What did Kim have to do with it? It seemed kind of obvious the writers didn't like the character and also made the decision to "swap" her out with Seven of Nine.

they were planning on cutting kim, but then the actor got listed in a "hottest actors" magazine listicle, so they went with kes instead.

they should have replaced half of the cast imo. so much dead weight that the writers didn't care about.

Poor chakotay and the gd synth flutes that waft in whenever his ethnicity is in play
Nonetheless he is one of the assets of the show, along with the cap’m, the dr, 7, and, yes, neelix, fuck you I like neelix.

I think Ebert said something about whether he'd rather watch the actors eat dinner than watch them in the movie as a metric for how badly they're used.
I feel that applies to all the cast, but which does it apply to most?

I’m not sure I follow you exactly but my favorite Star Trek characters are exactly those whom I would rather watch having dinner

https://i2.wp.com/www.tor.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/genesis2.jpg
Today is a good day to dine!

Watching so much DS9 in recent months underscores how much more interesting Worf got when he came onto that show

pic.twitter.com/0EUl6s4KYa

— Valondar (@VK_HM) December 9, 2020

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqxsv-cI5zU