Star Trek: Classic or Dud?

i think around that time, or soon after she became a ranking command officer anyway

You forgot that Romulan look!

http://static2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120528001143/memoryalpha/en/images/f/fb/Rakal_%28Major%29.jpg

Though she doesn't look as fetch as I remember.

riker and picard look like future gangsters hanging out at the club w/picard's moll while DJ Yar spins vulcan motorik

I don't know why but the boots are cracking me up

lol DJ Yar

And even though the male characters rarely get a chance to look stylish, I just love the ceremonial dress uniforms Picard and Riker wear when meeting with important guests. So ballin'!

http://i.stack.imgur.com/2Gayk.jpg

http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/184/ceremonial.jpg

http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/s2/2x19/manhunt001.jpg

Sorry, but those outfits just make Picard and Riker look like carvers in a high-end carvery.

ah but the miniskirt WAS supposed to be egalitarian

http://www.empireonline.com/images/uploaded/star-trek-next-generation-male-mini-skirt.jpg

Sartorially, one of the weirdest TNG episodes is "The Most Toys", which features a rather obviously gay alien collector called Kivas Fajo (he basically wants to keep Data as his boytoy):

http://i966.photobucket.com/albums/ae145/chozzles/322%20-%20The%20Most%20Toys/ScreenShot2011-08-13at112322AM.png

One of the things he demands of Data is that he should wear this ridiculous purple unitard:

http://www.theviewscreen.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/threadalert1-300x229.jpg

Seriously, wtf is that?!

http://subspacecomms.com/sites/default/files/0112-general/kivas.jpg

god the design on TNG is just so abominable

It got better! A lot better.

didn't Kivas also have a girlfriend who was de facto his captive and who helped free Data?

The outfit Q wears in 'Deja Q' is (possibly intentionally) ridiculous.
http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130127002522/memoryalpha/en/images/thumb/0/0e/Q_in_civilian_clothing.jpg/620px-Q_in_civilian_clothing.jpg

I am pretty sure at one point in the80s my mother bought a cocktail dress with the same silhouette as the Picard/Riker dress uniforms

Early TNG design is pretty much what the kids are into now, pretty sure that Riker\Picard formalwear wouldn't look out of place at a Rick Owens runway show if it was monochromatic

just because some kids dress like Dazzler now doesn't mean her look was ever justified

Only the laggards are still into TNG. The hip kids are into DS9 now. Bajoran earrings are making a big comeback, yo.

And even though the male characters rarely get a chance to look stylish, I just love the ceremonial dress uniforms Picard and Riker wear when meeting with important guests. So ballin'!

yeah... as in they were gettin balled by other dudes

respect to nana visitor but michelle forbes rocked the earrings and nose wrinkles first and best

the last line of "the most toys" is the coldest moment in the entire series

The SF Debris review notes that if it were Lore instead of Data, that episode would be about five minutes long.

in non-ST news, canadian-filmed (I think) BBC America science fiction drama Orphan Black is going to have Michelle Forbes *drudge siren*

didn't Kivas also have a girlfriend who was de facto his captive and who helped free Data?

Yeah, but it remains unclear whether she's his "girlfriend", or whether he just enjoys torturing her? Maybe Kivas is bisexual, or omnisexual, or whatever his species calls it. He definitely gives a human gay vibe though.

The SF Debris review notes that if it were Lore instead of Data, that episode would be about five minutes long.

To be fair, one of the first things Kivas asks from Data is whether he is permitted to hurt others; and when Data says no, he uses that to his advantage. Plus he has that force field protecting him... If Data couldn't penetrate it, I don't think Lore could either.

the last line of "the most toys" is the coldest moment in the entire series

I read from somewhere that both the scriptwriter and Brent Spiner felt that Data did indeed fire his phaser intentionally. But apparently some higher authority (Roddenberry?) said Data shouldn't be able to do that, so they made the ending more ambiguous. I like it more like that!

If Data couldn't penetrate it

Quotes taken out of context.

I read from somewhere that both the scriptwriter and Brent Spiner felt that Data did indeed fire his phaser intentionally. But apparently some higher authority (Roddenberry?) said Data shouldn't be able to do that, so they made the ending more ambiguous.

there's nothing really ambiguous about what happens in that scene imo -- data saying 'i cannot allow this to continue' doesn't make any sense if he's not about to fire, otherwise what's he going to do, just keep standing there?

roddenberry was notorious for objecting whenever the characters did something he personally considered 'out of character.' drove the TNG writers crazy, and was partly behind his clash with harlan ellison on 'city.'

data saying 'i cannot allow this to continue' doesn't make any sense if he's not about to fire, otherwise what's he going to do, just keep standing there?

Well yeah, it was obvious Data *wanted* to shoot... But the ambiguous bit was whether he was able to overcome his "do not kill except for self-defense" programming or not.

there's a brief flash before beamout and then the super-shifty "Perhaps SOMETHING occurred during transport" WINK WINK

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_skkBMvlWBw
"Perhaps something occurred during transport, Commander."
The look on Riker's face - he's so not convinced.

oh weird, i swore there was a flash. did they edit that out?

roddenberry was notorious for objecting whenever the characters did something he personally considered 'out of character.' drove the TNG writers crazy, and was partly behind his clash with harlan ellison on 'city.'

"He had Scotty selling drugs!"

There are moments when Gene showed symptoms of Lucas Disease when he would get in the way of his writers' better instincts. By all accounts, dude was the drag behind the early seasons of TNG, but those who took over eventually would drive the ship straight into the rocks themselves.

i sort of love the insane purity with which he explicitly disallowed conflict aboardship in those early seasons. no conflict in the future. drama without conflict. meanwhile the entire mechanism of TOS is the (sometimes vicious!) spock-bones-kirk dialectic; that's like the #1 thing people like about it.

He seems like maybe he was a nice guy and happened to initiate a big franchise but was not a big brain really?
I mean hey gene we'll just have him say something must have happened during transport. No prob, right?

No conflict, or zippers.

everything is unified

I agree that in terms of mechanics, the show worked better outside of roddenberry's "the future is awesome" box, but they basically turned star trek into a non-stop religious war/terrorism opera. (and I guess that's what the producers really had their heart into, because they went on to do the same exact thing with the battlestar reboot and 24)

oh, otm. when i read r.d. moore complaining abt roddenberry i'm always on roddenberry's side even tho he's gone too far. without that silly futurism it's just a tv show.

as opposed to a tv show with silly futurism in it. clearly superior.

non-stop religious war/terrorism opera

I don't recall this really happening with TNG but the last seasons are a blur and I'm sure there's stuff I never bothered to watch...? or are you referring to DS9 and after

DS9 definitely, but the Bajoran/Cardassian thing got started in TNG, and esp. TNG season 7, though I don't remember if it was more than one episode.

it's interesting in the early cardassian episodes on TNG, the action is represented by a few blinking triangles on a computer screen and dramatic music when one of the triangles stops blinking, and knitted brows.

by DS9 it's just full-on battle porn.

carl agatha + tuomas otm abt troi's atlantean dress btw, it elevates entire episodes.

(through effort we may all be able to just leave that verb there)

I agree that no conflict at all is pretty silly for a TV series, but OTOH one thing I really like about TNG is that all the main characters have this great, easy-going camaraderie going on, with little soap opera drama between them. (Of course it helps that the main actors themselves have a good chemistry with each other, once they settle into their roles after the soul-searching of season one; in my opinion TNG had one of the best ensembles in any American TV series.) Like, when the series starts Riker and Troi used to be a couple, but that's already way in the past, and yet it's pretty obvious they're still occasionally humping each other, but both of them also get to fuck several guest stars too... And I think most other series would've gotten some big jealousy drama out of it, but in TNG it's not big deal, Riker and Troi just roll with it. Apparently that was because of Roddenberry's vision of how sexuality would be in the 24th century, and TBH it's not a bad vision. Even today, you don't get to see too many series that'd be as sex-positive as TNG was 25 years ago.

weirdly tho even tho people (well mostly bones) are angry or stubborn more often in tos, tng is still way more of a soap opera. the soapiest thing in tos is amok time. or maybe the one with sarek. oodles of tng episodes are abt someone having a Character Journey while something perfunctory threatens the ship.

Tuomas is OTM all over this thread.

xp see every episode where Worf's son Alexander or his mother turn up.

the problem w that approach is that I find so many of the TNG characters inherently boring

i'm being unfair cuz character arcs are not "soap opera" they're just fiction, drama. the characters in TOS are all shallow archetypes. maybe that's just what i want these shows to attempt. there's that onion av club television-optimist tone of just being BOWLED OVER every time someone has two consecutive coherent emotions on a tv show and i am underwhelmed by a lot of that stuff in tng. xp ha.