Star Trek: Classic or Dud?

we didn't talk about the recent *amazing* film much on here. was there a seperate thread devoted to it?

aha Young Kirk n Spock + Lost = new Star Trek movie

God that movie was great.

it was good. in order to be great it would have needed a better villain.

it was better than it had any reason to be. as in, it was like the third or fourth best star trek movie and there are like,, 200 of them.

paramount showed way more respect to the original episodes with those CGI updates than lucas did to his own films -- all the ones i've seen have been tasteful and non-distracting.

any consensus on what the best TNG seasons are? i kind of want to watch it again but don't really want to slog through those early episodes again.

my favorite stuff is actually fairly early on - the arc with the Federation conspiracy/cosmic earwig infestation, Q's stories. the Data/Lore stuff is pretty good. Seems like reruns are on all the time, but it's always the boring "office in space" type shit. series was definitely on for too long.

hmm.. i like the first four the best, for the same sorts of reasons.

the arc with the Federation conspiracy/cosmic earwig infestation

shit yeah

^ should run that every halloween

lol I guess that was only 2 episodes at the end of season 1

"it was like the third or fourth best star trek movie and there are like,, 200 of them."

if you're going by star trek parody movies that were surprisingly better than most star trek movies,
there's lots! Galaxy Quest, Futurama, hm.. well I guess that's it.

yeah, so bummed that they never went back to it. strange in that it's the only star trek storyline i know of where you get the idea that the federation is a complex, political and morally questionable organization. stealth smack down on roddenberry's midcentury utopian idealism.

x-post there

yeah, those eps were dope. was also super-disappointed that they never really touched on the conspiracy stuff again.

season 3/4 was the sweet spot for me iirc.

also always have time for the crystalline entity.

Seasons 3-5 are TNG at its best IMO. I do agree it went on for too long though - the last season was extremely bland (and often plain bad).

The Conspiracy bugs should definitely have made a comeback, but producers decided not to, simply because fans thought it too icky. The "Section 31" episodes of DS9 did a pretty similar thing for the Federation.

they did bring the conspiracy back, kind of. the borg were originally supposed to be those space maggots

thanks, alan

the borg were originally supposed to be those space maggots

that so? missed that. not quite the same thing tho...

to be honest I'm glad they didn't go that route. i like bughunting and I like star trek,
but I don't think i would like star trek: bughunter very much. it'd be like that time
they turned picard into jack sparrow.

I've never heard about the borg thing either. not really that similar outside of the gross out factor, right?

speaking of trek stuff that didn't get enough play - always hated how the gorn bridge gets mentioned a couple times in "arena" but never actually makes an appearance. give these guys a spinoff imo.

and np, contenderizer.

this will have to do for now:

http://edpratherart.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/11-gorn-bridge-colored-pencil-on-black-paper2.jpg?w=346&h=450
http://edpratherart.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/12-thine-enemy-captain-colored-pencil-on-black-paper1.jpg?w=346&h=450

I would frame that beautiful fan art.

oh man, i'm totally going to watch some TNG and get stoned tonight.

but I don't think i would like star trek: bughunter very much

Would watch the shit out of Star Trek: Bughunter

Seasons 3-5 are TNG at its best IMO

this

http://gornshop.com/

What makes me continually want to cry is that I'll (probably) never be able to watch TNG in a cleaned-up, 16:9 aspect ratio format due to the way the FX were somehow boiled down onto video in some kind of hard-coded 4:3 format. They can't actually reformat for 16:9 because the FX are printed over the top somehow. I don't think there's any non-FX masters or anything they could eventually work up from.

Once, while rendered borderline autistic through cannabis and improperly prescribed antidepressant medication, I spent weeks trying to make the "perfect" rips of the standard TNG DVDs, but there's really nothing you can do and the show was just shot like a piece of shit. Frustrating. With DS9 they finally bought some good cameras or something.

I don't know. I figure there's good enough computers now that they could probably figure all that shit out somehow.

Kind of sad that the things I'm more worried about not seeing before I die are Star Trek-related and not things like proportional representation or reformed cannabis legislation. Oh well.

http://brentwindsor.co.uk/proportions/proportions.gif

i watched TNG religiously when it was on but I absolutely can't be bothered with it now, I doubt I could sit through an episode.

God that movie was great.

Outta yr mind

As an OST fan (early in its syndication run), I was never interested in the other series when they came around. And I don't even want to see JJ Abrams' second film for free.

I thought the new movie was okay, but not as a Star Trek movie. To me ST was always about this sci-fi pacifism and utopianism; the best TNG and original series TV episodes are the ones where they solve problems with their minds and/or trough negotiation, not with space battles. That's what makes ST different from Star Wars. But the new movie was basically just a big, fight scene heavy space opera spiced with a bit of sci-fi quasi-science. It was pretty good as such, but it didn't feel like a proper Star Trek story. The characters were more like action heroes than the sort of intelligent problem-solvers they were in the series.

the first season of TNG is unbearably bad aside from a couple eps (though the first season did give us the "rape gangs of turkana IV"). roddenberry seriously hamstrung the show in the early seasons with his lunkheaded decree that there be no interpersonal conflict between the crew - there was no place for it in his utopian future. i grew up on TNG and it was greatly loved by me as a kid, but revisiting it and TOS as an adult it's clear that the original series is way better. there's no character dynamic in TNG as interesting as kirk-mccoy-spock - the humanist themes really feel so much more lively when they're being expressed by characters who violently disagree w/each other. all that cheesy 80s new age stuff in TNG - it's part of the charm in a way, but it's also clearly a tepid replacement for human drama.

i mostly agree with tuomas re: the 09 Star Trek movie - i enjoyed it but it was more of an action movie than a Trek movie, though I give it credit for at least being a really good action movie (most of the TNG movies were just incredibly bad action movies). the villain WAS weak but I chalked that up to origin story syndrome - they're saving the best villains for the second installment. i also thought they underutilized mccoy, who's supposed to be kirk's one true confidant and a vital counter-point to spock's beep boop ice-cold logic.

there's no character dynamic in TNG as interesting as kirk-mccoy-spock

how about riker-riker

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ck-VIA1GUCY

nb all trek fans should immediately watch all clips on that page

this is my favorite tng edit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jk7eyqY4bbQ

roddenberry seriously hamstrung the show in the early seasons with his lunkheaded decree that there be no interpersonal conflict between the crew

yeah, it's odd to realize that roddenberry in some ways wasn't such a great influence on his own shows -- he had very little role in 'wrath of khan' because he was (kinda rightly) blamed for the boringness of the first movie, which also has pretty much no conflict or character interest going on.

TNG tried to do a spock and mccoy kind of conflict with that awful doctor who replaced crusher for a while, didn't they?

"that awful doctor" was in two of TOS series, once as love interest, once as the enemy

http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Diana_Muldaur

yeah, so bummed that they never went back to it. strange in that it's the only star trek storyline i know of where you get the idea that the federation is a complex, political and morally questionable organization. stealth smack down on roddenberry's midcentury utopian idealism.

I love DS9 in part because they really get into the idea that the Federation isn't uniformly awesome, and even though the main characters remain Federation stans, they do allow characters to express some pretty OTM criticisms of it as a political entity.

Also, yes, the bugs-into-Borg as main bad enemy of TNG is confirmed on Memory Alpha. I love the Borg. They are way creepier to me than parasitic worms are.

OST & TNG are about equal in my estimation, most of the movies are fun & watchable, the other series I will probably never see.

To me ST was always about this sci-fi pacifism

You did notice that Jim Kirk interfered imperially in alien socities ALL THE FRIGGIN' TIME? And sometimes violently. He was like the Teddy Roosevelt of the cosmos.

prime directive is some massive bullshit anyway.

naw naw, prime directive is cool. it's capital punishment for visiting throbbing headvein planet that is wack.

did they ever revisit that planet in any of the other ST shows?

not that i know of. missed opportunities...

did they ever revisit that planet in any of the other ST shows?

No. Wish they did...

x-post

Back when Star Trek: Voyager was still taking unsolicited scripts I had a great idea as to whether the Prime Directive was applicable in reverse - would Star Fleet (or at least Voyager) allow itself to use tech so far ahead that it could violate the Prime Directive (especially once they used it to return to Federation Space).

Never got further than a plot outline, but it's one thing ST (in whatever show) never satisfactorily addressed. "Where No One Has Gone Before" sorta does it, but it's first season TNG and, well, you know...

i remembered that episode being kinda cool but just looked it up and hey, what do you know, it's a 'wesley saves the ship' episode.

I thought the new movie was okay, but not as a Star Trek movie. To me ST was always about this sci-fi pacifism and utopianism; the best TNG and original series TV episodes are the ones where they solve problems with their minds and/or trough negotiation, not with space battles.

perhaps, but most of the trek movies have been action-adventures that were light on the actual sci-fi stuff (except as plot devices).

the only truly science fictional trek movie was the first one, and people seem to hate that one.

also morbz has a point about TOS--for every episode where conflict was solved by understanding a rock monster's feelings or whatever there are another 3 episodes where Kirk & co totally violate the prime directive to kick some klingon ass.

In 2011, de Lancie will appear in Torchwood: Miracle Day, the fourth season of the Doctor Who spin-off series Torchwood (episodes of which were written by Jane Espenson and John Shiban).[3]