Star Trek: Classic or Dud?

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!

Enterprise - trip is annoying but that vulcan's fit.

first series: like what i haf seen but haven't watched many episodes.

Next generation: only reached goodeness after the Borg came in the picture.

Deep space nine: deeply flawed (a space station in the middle of nowhere and they had to make a war to make it interesting so it had problems just like next generation) though I did watch most of it.

Voyager: the absolute fucking classic. They are stranded and haf to go back but they explore the other side of the quadrant which means all sorts of storylines, (this aspect is exploited to the full) and if that isn't enough then here are the words that settle this argument.

SEVEN OF NINE.

The woman of my dreams (Troi is an ugly witch compared to my seven). She's like Data (both trying to gain 'humanity') but she's a woman. And what a woman. Then the doctor who i think is rilly rilly funny too.

I was pissed off that my brother missed taping two episodes and I made him aware of that to say the least(only six were taped, I had to spend all night watching them on the day i got back from canada and it was time well spent though seven is breaking my heart trying to 'get' chakotay).

(Fun fact: The student services building at my school is called the William Shatner building & even has the Shatner Ballroom. Classic!)

DO YOU SEE!!?

heh. Alex (my brother's name) would never say 'improv' as he doesn't know what that is. or wants to know.

Good: Wrath Of Khan, The Voyage Home (time travel, whales), The Undiscovered Country (Peace with the Klingons), First Contact (The Borg hit Earth), hopefully Nemesis

Bad: Star Trek: the Motionless Picture, The Search For Spock, The Final Frontier (Crazy Vulcan searches for God), Generations (Malcom MacDowell froths, Kirk dies), Insurrections (not that terrible, just a double length TNG episode).

Having finally seen the trailer, my hopes for the film are now quite high.

ARGH. Now I'm massively disappointed as well!

So while I can see the intrinsic appeal of the attractiveness of the women in late STrek progs, I can't see it as a tribute to the imagination, skill and integrity of the programme makers.

There is hope left in this sad world.

Riker and Troi get married in the new movie...

DS9 finished yesterday. Voyager starts on a different channel next week (i saw the second half of this during lockdown, but can't remember just how much)

pretty good: https://b3ta.com/challenge/startreksings/popular

Lol @ Don't Luc Back in Anger

These are great! The Rumours cover with the Mick Fleetwood-as-alien is a good deep cut joke.

Those are really good! Also, I am procrastinating from writing an essay and

https://i.imgur.com/VhHzg7O.png

didn't think I'd seen voyager since it aired other than catching the last few series during lockdown, but s01e03 i could remember chunks of, and the phage episode

I put a random VOY ep on as comfort viewing yesterday and it was the 2-partner where the Hirogen have captured the ship and everyone is in a bloody WWII French resistance dive bar in the holodeck. I couldnt get through the episode, the premise feels so overdone. And also, why did Janeway get made to look like a klingon but everyone else just looks like themselves? Anyway bleh.

ugh i hated that one, bloody interminable

that one was bad but i liked the hirogen in general

especially when it's tony todd

at least there are no Ferengi (apart from episode 1 where they set off from DS9 and Quark makes a cameo)

there's another one but it's not good either

Ha when I was watching the first of the hirogen eps a few days ago, my other half says "thats the Candyman guy doing the role isnt it", just from his voice.

rewatched the first appearance of Tony Todd as Worf's brother Kurn on TNG recently. good stuff

Tony Todd's DS9 episodes are incredible tearjerkers.

Just watched The Visitor for the first time today! Great episode

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)