Star Trek: Classic or Dud?

wow, really need to pick that book up

how come, Jeff?

I tried to give it a chance and I do like the occasional episode (The Galileo Seven). I don't mind the production values, I suppose that is part of the charm. Obviously as Carl mentions, the sexism is a big part of it and how it is often explained away by saying it was a sign of the times, 60s, free love expression, etc etc. It was really after The Enemy Within that it because so off-putting, specifically the scene at the end with Spock and Yeoman Rand. From Memory Alpha:

Actress Grace Lee Whitney was very unhappy about the last scene of this episode, in which Spock asks Yeoman Rand, if "The imposter had some very interesting qualities, wouldn't you say, Yeoman?". In her autobiography, she wrote: "I can't imagine any more cruel and insensitive comment a man (or Vulcan) could make to a woman who has just been through a sexual assault! But then, some men really do think that women want to be raped. So the writer of the script (ostensibly Richard Matheson - although the line could have been added by Gene Roddenberry or an assistant scribe) gives us a leering Mr. Spock who suggests that Yeoman Rand enjoyed being raped and found the evil Kirk attractive!" (The Longest Trek: My Tour of the Galaxy, p. 95)

Certainly not the only occurrence. You find this stuff peppered throughout the episodes and it just gets tiresome. It's distracting.

Beyond that, I just find the pacing awful. Each episode drags, I check out much time is left and only 10 minutes has passed. It's boring. A lot of the stories could be interesting, but they are just killed by how they are drawn out. Maybe it will get better. I've seen many episodes, but we are only recently going through and doing a complete viewing of the seasons.

Which series was 'The Negron Complex' in?

it's more an expression of thoughtless kennedyesque privilege than of free love. although i guess the miniskirts are the latter. re that dumb spock line (a particular shame in light of what i remember as a genuinely and deliberately creepy assault scene, where instead of Evil Kirk being an out-of-nowhere cackling villain he's just an undiluted expression of impulses we already know to be present in kirk, like his weakness for hitting on his subordinates) i guess all i'd say is that spock is not the most sensitive guy in general. (THINK ABOUT IT.) but then, granted, nor is anyone else. except bones. i bet bones would never say something like that.

there are a bunch of really boring episodes to me (although not really any more than in TNG) -- the one i remember really being interminable is "the alternative factor", where a guy they got at the last minute to replace john barrymore stops what seems like every forty-five seconds to clutch his head and listen to dramatic music while the colors go negative and the camera tilts back and forth in the single worst special effect in the entire series (parallel universes are intersecting, or something). it's particularly maddening if you're forcing yourself to watch every episode cuz the one right after it is "city on the edge of forever", which the fourth or fifth time the guy clutches his head seems impossibly far away.

all Star Trek except TOS is of no interest to me. I watched about 3 eps of TNG and never even bothered with an entire episode of the others. The Picard-Kirk movie was pretty weak, particularly when Shatner wasn't around.

yes, the '60s, when men were men and space was Vietnam. Make allowances, and deal.

(I do remember that "interesting qualities" line cited by Grace Lee Whitney -- when I first saw the episode I was probably ten and didn't know what the hell it meant -- and obviously it's foul, but far from unique to Star Trek.)

I don't know I've seen the entire series the whole way through, and I don't remember the names of a lot of the episodes I've seen (such a girl), but my favorite is definitely The Menagerie two-parter.

The thing with TOS vs TNG is that the bad TOS episodes are unwatchable. The bad TNG episodes can either be watched for laughs (the one where the entire crew de-evolve) or at least are competently made and acted (Farpoint).

the worst TNG eps are really tedious and bad, and there's a lot of them.

the bad TOS episodes are unwatchable

Like "Spock's Brain"? I differ.

Spock's Brain is AWESOME! The bad TOS episodes can be watched for laughs too.

As a percentage there are fewer bad TNG eps than TOS eps. Most of TOS season 3 goes from 'I should care about this plot why exactly?' downwards.

i just watched most of TNG - it's such a great series, so thoughtful and full of ideas and resolutely humanistic

i still can't believe they got away with making picard, and not another kirk figure, the series lead. a bald shakespearean pacifist with a french name!

Menagerie is awful!!! It's a clip show!!

great idea for an actual Starfleet captain; for a TV lead, not so much

xp

it also always blows my mind how many ideas/stories they could fit into one 42-minute episode. sure there are some duds but think about how crammed a 22-episode season is, as opposed to the way shows are in the HBO era, where a storyline is stretched out over a whole season

Fwiw, DS9 is my favorite series. Followed closely by TNG. They are essentially 1a and 1b for me.

xxxp It's a clip show of an episode that never aired!

(xps) It's a pretty good clip show. For a start, there's a lot more to it than two characters sitting in a room saying "oh do you remember when X happened?".

great idea for an actual Starfleet captain; for a TV lead, not so much

xp

― Pangborn to be Wilde (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, June 19, 2012 11:34 AM (12 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you just admitted you only watched a handful of episodes

he's a totally original character and at his best, an electrifying performer

xxpost >:( Menagerie is NOT awful. you're a clip show.

It took the clips from the boring pilot and made me watch them again. Damn you star trek.

mystified that anyone could stan for TNG as being LESS boring than TOS. feel like the former has way more instances of boring tehcnobabble where nothing happens for 40 minutes

xp

sounds like my wedding night!

xxp It took the awesome bits from the mostly boring pilot and made them watchable by putting some more awesome stuff around them.

It blows my mind how 10 or 12 shows is now considered an HBO "season." Wimps and their "quality."

I believe original Star Trek did 26 shows a year, not 22? In the '50s, the norm for a series was 39.

As for The Menagerie, it was just a way to use 95% of the original pilot, with a wraparound.

Even with a dull episode of TOS you can at least marvel at all the pretty colors.

has way more instances of boring tehcnobabble where nothing happens for 40 minutes

No that would be Voyager.

if you really are bored of the technobabble, i have something for you

(i forgot i did this)

https://vimeo.com/33635230
pw: crusher

OG crew > TNG crew, because the OG crew never had a Wesley Crusher or a Commander Riker or a Deanna Troi

I enjoy both shows tho

TOS seasons 1 & 2, 26 episodes each. Season 3 had 24 episodes.

Menagerie uses a clip show to tell Captain Pike's story and it's great HARRUMPH

OG crew > TNG crew, because the OG crew never had a Wesley Crusher or a Commander Riker or a Deanna Troi

I enjoy both shows tho

agree with this

don't you dare talk shit about riker

I don't remember TNG as being so slow in the 90s, but it's amazing to watch at 1.5x speed

I'm a doctor, not a fast-forwarder

lol

lolling at "you're a clip show" btw

same

flexing my rhetoric muscles itt, lol

I believe original Star Trek did 26 shows a year, not 22? In the '50s, the norm for a series was 39.

Not only that, but there were several more minutes of show than there are now. I think there were only 8-9 minutes of commercials in an hourlong back then.

Each TOS ep is just over 50 mins.

Riker used to annoy the hell out of me (he's such a relentless poonhound) but he's grown on me over the years. A few nights ago we watched the season four ep where he's living undercover among people about to develop warp technology and he gets captured and this nurse is like, "I'll let you go, but you have to bone me first" and Riker's just like, "rmde okay, lady, let's go." Which I like to read as a parody of his earlier (and Kirk's) horndoggery around sexy aliens.

(I also like how in Voyager they turned the Handsome Rogue into a smitten family man and let the nerdy Chinese guy be the (varyingly successful) ladies man.)

yeah it's so great that they made the kirk character the second-in-command who basically spends half the time barking out the orders picard can't be bothered to

Episode generator
http://www.bargaintuan.com/sttngplotgen/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vcCojlE9AQ

once TNG gets rolling it can be pretty good, but the first season is so fucking awful. it's just episode after episode of numbing incompetence, albeit with a few memorable camp moments here and there. it makes for a tough contrast with TOS where the first season was the best.

(i know TNG starts in 87 but it feels so 90s. i started in 1987 too and i feel pretty 90s.)

― a hauntingly unemployed american (difficult listening hour), Monday, June 18, 2012 11:10 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

boy do i disagree! TNG is as 80s-to-the-core as magnum PI. well it's probably more accurate to say that the 80s seasons are super 80s-y; by the end of the run it does feel like a very 90s show. but i mean look at these guys:

http://i.imgur.com/ZYRvj.jpg

just offscreen: an orange julius and a theater showing beverly hills cop ii

plus the smug new age touchy feeliness that is the show's foundation just reads california, 1980s to me

TNG was god to me when i was a kid but now i greatly prefer TOS. TNG's brand of humanism seems deeply creepy and fucked up now, the enterprise and its crew often come off like a megachurch in space. TOS was possessed of a more hotblooded brand of utopianism that feels more human to me, and also lends itself to drama much more naturally. plus the characters are way better and i find it more aesthetically appealing, especially the colorful expressionist art direction.

A lot of early TNG badness is pretty much recycled TOS badness, so it's kind of strange to compare them because they are the same badness!
later TNG badness was more like Twin Peaks badness. It was basically Twin Peaks in space during the low moments.

Horny club-handed nurse was LIlith from Cheers! Kirstie Alley was supposed to reprise Saavik role in that Frasier cameo at the end of Yesterday's Enterprise but that never happened. TNG has aged better than Cheers, I think. If you listen to the Borg battle in First Contact, you can hear Frazier on the com traffic.

Horny club-handed nurse was LIlith from Cheers!

Ah! I thought she looked familiar!

cheers has aged super well imho