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!

voyager 2.02 features Kar, a young kid.

who is, from the first moment he opens his mouth, the same guy who played Nog in ds9.

nog

Meantime, a state o' the franchise report

https://variety.com/2024/tv/features/star-trek-future-starfleet-academy-section-31-michelle-yeoh-1235952301/

Started watching Enterprise. Grudgingly having to accept its not actually that bad after all. The temporal cold war stuff should be interesting (only halfway thru S1 so far)

mr veg really liked it at the time, i only half-watched & peaced out pretty quick. the only thing i liked was singing the theme song lol

maybe i’ll revisit one day

it's okay (and if you're halfway thru S1 and still think it's not bad then you'll be totally fine!)

as ever, the non-humans are the most interesting characters. yes that includes porthos

the theme song IS good tho

she got saddled with some truly egregious crap, but i think jolene blaylock was really very good -- certainly much better than bakula

The theme song + being weird and horny about the Vulcan XO gave it a worse reputation than it deserves. Still the worst pre-Discovery series but not awful.

Yeah its like, Trek if they put it on NBC like a season of NCIS or something. I cant put my finger on it, maybe its the cadre of actors? And yes, a lot of gratuitous tightly-clinging outfits both on T'Pol and sometimes on other female crew, which, ugh.

i'd put enterprise above tng, ds9, and voyager, even when they get into "the expanse" and there's that dumb AF xindi nonsense with one xindi species that is insect, one xindi species that is monkeys, one xindi species that is reptiles, one xindi species that is fish etc like it was written by a 5 year old. oh the british dude is unwittingly hilarious as well "would you mind awfully if i sacrifice myself here for the good of the crew, captain?"

re: network trash serial vibe, weirdly many of the actors/producers ended up doing 24 so it was definitely the era for neo-con trek. the xindi "5 species" stuff i thought was at least ambitious and kind of new for trek though yeah the entire series was very much a 5-year old's concept of trek.

the actual star trek kid's show is surprisingly good! though picking jason mantzoukas to voice any character puts up this hurdle of "hey why does that alien sound like jason mantzoukas?"

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