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!

There’s a Twilight Zone episode or two on the theme.

Doesn't TNG have a few episodes like that? "Future Imperfect" and I want to say another one involving Picard.

These days you can watch the pilot standalone. Kids today!

don't get this 'joke'

Shore Leave is one of my faves too - always love seeing the original crew in real locations.

These days you can watch the pilot standalone. Kids today!

- don't get this 'joke'

pilot was cut up for a cheap two-parter episode during the season, used as flashback / video evidence in a trial.

in 1986, the cut-up bits were recompiled with the missing bits from Roddenberry's office-use-only rough-cut B&W reference print and released on VHS.

in 1987, some of the colour trims were found in a skip and an almost-complete colour version (about ten minutes short) was re-re-compiled and shown on TV in 1988. these young whippersnappers of today were then able to buy either the complete or the colour version on laserdisc! they, and you, don't know they're born.

Sorry, was sort of pretending to be a certain Star Trek- and Paul Lynde- fan that used to post around here.

Another fan of "Shore Leave" here. Ran the local library's projector for it and other ST episodes when I was a kid, back with single channel weekly reruns, ST episode photo books and memorizing the Compendium. Finnegan's gleeful cackle was great, Alice and the White Rabbit set the tone, etc. Also agree on seeing them in real locations. Visiting Vasquez Rocks was a bucket list check off.

Duds ahead: "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield", "Turnabout Intruder", "The Gamesters of Triskelion" (gets my vote for cringiest).

Yeah, those are all pretty bad.

Joke was fine!

Gamesters was semi-remade into TNG's Code of Honor which may be the worst episode of that series.

nothing in TOS season 3 is great. last battlefield is bad in an entertaining way.

Yes, it somewhat fell off a cliff in Season 3 - a bit like Lazarus keeps doing in "Alternative Factor".

Oh no, I love "Shore Leave." I think it imprinted on me when I saw it at a young age and did not know wtf was going on in it. The hallucinatory mood of it was was intriguing.

I love "Shore Leave". Along with "Spectre of the Gun", it was one of the first episodes I remembered seeing when I was probably 7. Both episodes had a main character "die" in them which left a big impression on little me.

I'm pretty much of the opinion there are almost no bad Star Trek: TOS episodes. Even the "bad" ones are classic. Season 3 has two of my favorites: "Plato's Stepchildren" and "The Savage Curtain", which if you don't find amusing I weep for your soul.

There is something to be said about this last statement. Case in point "Spock's Brain," to name one.

We just started S2 - Amok Time was great!. I had never seen it before despite knowing some of the cultural references

Same writer as Shore Leave!

you guys can love Shore Leave all you want. I know what I saw

agree w vg about "shore leave"-- cute but i don't like when this show spends an entire episode trying to be funny-- and of course about "the alternative factor" which is the worst TOS episode. i like "squire of gothos" tho. lacks the action to fill out its runtime and compensates by repeating itself but the ending is my favorite instance of its cliche and also it will always be significant to me that a banal line from it ("i'll go along with this charade until i can think my way out") was plagiarized for no reason by bob dylan. my least favorite s1 episodes are the most famous-- the interminable salvage job of "the menagerie" and of course "city on the edge of forever", a boring twilight zone that probably thinks it's talking you into shutting up about vietnam.

"the gamesters of triskelion" is p unpleasant but i do like its colors, including/especially of the gamesters' brains-- mentioning this cuz vg is otm about the color in general which is my fave part of this show.

in s3 i like "the enterprise incident" (best spock ep short of amok time) and "the cloud minders" (class!) v much, and "day of the dove" provisionally (fun to think about in context, and to compare to s2's delusional "a private little war"). "plato's stepchildren" is at least strikingly sadistic, tho its vaunted Television First does not seem particularly woke in context. "spectre of the gun" has the best+eeriest set design in the "crew beams down into a b-movie" genre of TOS episode; plus i think it's the one where kirk says "we come in peace" and immediately draws his phaser. remain soullessly unamused by "the savage curtain" (shore leave with animatronics).

fill out its runtime

'the alternative factor' and 'last battlefield' are brutal examples of this. i mean the endless running through the corridors of the enterprise in the latter . . .

will always ride for pittsburgh's own frank gorshin tho

IMO "City on the Edge of Forever" earns its stripes for having the sharpest, most clearly defined dialogue among the main trio.

"City on the Edge of Forever" is great.

I watched it purely because of the Discovery ep that it referenced, and liked it a lot.

OK I feel stupid I've only now realised that was Joan Collins in the ep *facepalm*

I envy your innocence.

xpost omg!

i enjoy City on Edge of Forever as a chance to see Kirk & Spock butch up in flannel shirts

omg! as in omg trayce not omg i didnt know

i am slightly salty about them ditching Yeoman Janice aka Baskethead as a recurring character early in season 1 bc apparently they wanted a parade of various attractive women yeomanning for Kirk instead of just her

i liked her! i also found they made an action figure of her :D

I think there is more to the story than just that.

Yeah, a rather disturbing one, and if the most common interpretation is true, one that reflects very poorly on Roddenberry.

ok i will do some extra curricular reading

Harlan Ellison, among others, tells some stories about what went on in that bungalow.

it will always be significant to me that a banal line from it ("i'll go along with this charade until i can think my way out") was plagiarized for no reason by bob dylan
I just looked this up and it said they were both citing an earlier source.

imo the worst season 1 episode by a long long way is mudd's women. not just sexist but really boring. (the other episode with harry mudd isn't that bad, iirc.) 

http://dylanfilm.atspace.com/tj.html

Bogart in a film called Tokyo Joe.

oh that does make sense for mid-80s dylan (just before brownsville girl). can imagine him catching that on tv one afternoon, as i had imagined him catching the squire of gothos. dunno why it crops up (slightly distorted) in the trek episode tho lol. think it was one of michael gray's books i got that loose connection from.

re mudd’s women i think of this post a lot

mudd's women was one of the three stories roddenberry pitched for the star trek pilot. he was using the fantastic allegorical power of sci-fi to tell the story of a pimp who lives in a cave.

― Einstein, Kazanga, Sitar (abanana), Wednesday, August 10, 2016 8:10 PM bookmarkflaglink

ok i will do some extra curricular reading

I think people also talk about it earlier in this thread? Certainly ILE was where I found out about it.

Yes, there is some discussion upthread.

Vulcanian?

daily voyager repeats now on season 3 in the UK. they go back in time and space to... Earth 1996. that'll save on props. and i bet it'll be somewhere in the los angeles area... (see also ST:IV)

LA, yes. also with guest slots from sarah silverman and ed begley jr.

Lol.

Lower Decks S2 premieres next Friday... the 13th! BUM BUM BUMMMM.

wahoo

For a split second I wondered why you were telling us about the horny yacht crew programme.

need a supercut of

JR OFFICER: In visual range.

CAPTAIN: On screen.

(*a small blur*)

CAPTAIN: Magnify!

Have recently been watching Star Trek Continues, which faithfully re-creates the look & feel of the original series and has episodes which follow on from TOS as well, e.g. "The Fairest of them All" after the events of "Mirror Mirror".

All the episodes can be found here (are free to view on YouTube): https://www.startrekcontinues.com/episodes.html

some good guest stars too! Erin Gray, Colin Baker, Sophie Aldred. Getting Chris Doohan in to play Scotty was a nice move.

Didn't know this existed. Thanks!

Cool. How does that compare to Phase II?

oops, *not* Sophie Aldred, Nicola Bryant! Getting Ace and Peri confused. The makers were presumably Who fans, at any rate.

Lou Ferrigno plays an Orion slave trader. Guess he's used to playing green people.

How does that compare to Phase II?

Don't know. Haven't seen it.