Star Trek: Classic or Dud?

Made it through the 2nd Q episode. Man he sounds so much like an every person in an internet comment section argument. Still it's a lot of fun when he's around and there is guaranteed to be some crazy visual effects and fun conceptual shuffling of the decks.

Really digging the humor and pathos Patrick Stewart brings to his role. Little things like keeping people off the deck and getting pissed of when people interrupt him both make the world seem more real than the OST and make the captain seem more competent and worthy of respect for having to put up w the constant barrage of stuff messing with his ship in every way.

Data acting like Sherlock Holmes in that one ep was an easy mark but dang it was fun. Spock is still way cooler but Data is silly in a good way. I like how he turned down Q's offer to make him a human.

http://i.imgur.com/5tJfybD.jpg

Read that as "ethereal whining". :(

actually my new fb profile picture now ty

Ha you're welcome!

what episode is that from?

The Dauphin - Wesley romances young lady/light being/goggle-eyed fur monster

Played by Mädchen Amick!

Or her furry monster guardian is, I mean.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mädchen_Amick

Season 2, aired in 1989. This ep would have been shot right before the Twin Peaks pilot began production, right?

http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20121210010124/memoryalpha/en/images/thumb/c/c7/Anya,_teenage_girl.jpg/500px-Anya,_teenage_girl.jpg

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/The_Dauphin_(episode)

ilx linker doesn't dig special characters

mmmmmmmmadchen

Funny, I just watched "When the Bough Breaks" which has Brenda Strong, also of Twin Peaks fame:

https://travelingwithjim.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/brendastrong.jpg

> ilx linker doesn't dig special characters

or closing brackets 8)

The Dauphin

is that better? or this?

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/The_Dauphin_(episode)

(yes, no)

I tried to start watching DS9 and fell asleep 2/3rds of the way through the first episode so... fail

some of the political maneuvering was pretty interesting but man the bad acting... Sisko's line readings are bizarre

ds9 is the best, i've been watching it through slowly over the past year
episode consistency doesnt really pick up until season 4 but there's some v good ones in the first few seasons still

i love the weird avery brooks line readings. they never really go away though so if thats a dealbreaker for you then yeah..

some of it worked - the first scene where he's strong-arming Quark into staying on had a very Sopranos vibe - but then there was stuff like him on the beach talking to his dead wife and it was all so stiff and idk practically inhuman

idk if I have the patience to sit through 3 seasons of boring shit to get to the good stuff

i have this episode guide some dudes on twitter made that shows which ones to watch if you just want the main storyline, so thats another option besides watching them all. condenses things by a lot especially in the first couple seasons.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nFIFQCxxyCcaOx9o0S0u3Db3g-ViWQUFtynql5XxPeo/edit

I think that's just Avery Brooks's theater theatre background. It bugged me too when I first watched the series, but eventually I came to appreciate how he chewed on scenes.

There's some discussion of Avery Brooks and how fabulously weird he is upthread. I am fully Team Avery Brooks Weird Line Delivery, personally.

avery brooks is the best

That DS9 spreadsheet (lol) is exactly what I was looking for, thanks so much. Want to attempt a series watch (after TNG) as I've heard so many good things about the late seasons (although I also fell asleep during the pilot). But there's just *so much* of it.

I'm fine with Sisqo b does Quark get less annoying?

*but does*

Quark is an acquired taste -- I was surprised how much I liked the comic Ferengi episodes when I rewatched DS9.

He's good at calling out hu-mons on their bullshit and hypocrisy.

He never annoyed me, but I liked his presence more and more as the show went on. Remember at the time he was a way to add to that anti-Federation "peace and harmony" from the other shows - the character develops bit by bit

Just finished "Skin of Evil". The death of Tasha Yar took me by surprise, especially with her hologram appearing at her funeral to give very specific and poignant goodbyes to everyone present. "If you're seeing this, I must be dead."

Trekonomics:

https://vimeo.com/131823542

Damn "Conspiracy" is insane, took me completely off guard! "Come Picard, you will soon be like us, now let's all sit down to a nice meal ..... of bugs!!!"

yeah that episode is mental. I have hazy memories of it ruining certain meals for me, even a year after it aired.

http://quark.name/images/Quark_Complete_final.jpg

Damn "Conspiracy" is insane, took me completely off guard!

I don't think they ever bettered this arc tbh. show peaked early.

It wasn't an arc though- just one episode wasn't it?

Well that main prick was in an earlier episode as an inspector.

Btw his death was just ..... whaaaaaaa? I was expecting Khan-level grossness and got Scanners instead!

hmm for some reason I had this memory that there was foreshadowing about the episode in previous episodes but apparently I'm wrong there...?

xp

No you're right, there were some spotty attempts earlier in I believe season 2 suggesting infiltration into Starfleet Command, which "Conspiracy" is supposed to conclude.

I always wanted one of the Trek movies (pre-reboot) to follow on Conspiracy.

weren't the borg supposed to be the conspiracy bugs?

no.

The writers originally intended the parasites to be agents of the Borg. Due to the Writers' Strike of 1988 as well as budget cuts, the connection between the Borg and the parasites was never established. (

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Neural_parasite_%2824th_century%29

ha, never knew that

"The Schizoid Man" was so good. Evil Data is creepy! That eulogy was hilarious.

It also shares names with an equally cool episode of The Prisoner.

http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/images/7/70/La_Forge_scans_Data.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20121212025002&path-prefix=en

The episode where Joe Piscopo teaches Data about comedy is really bad in an early 90s way.

Not including the movies here.

The Next Generation > the original series > Deep Space 9 > Voyager > Enterprise.

DS9 is marred by having a fairly weak first season (though TNG's was even weaker) as well as the inclusion of a completely unnecessary supernatural subplot (the Pah-Wraiths) which kinda sours the final story arc... But at its best (seasons 4 to 6, basically), I'd say it's better than any other Trek. The ensemble of actors is almost as good as TNG's (Avery Brooks isn't Patrick Stewart, but he does get better throughout the series, so I wouldn't let his weird line readings from the pilot distract you too much), with the added bonus that the women in the cast are much better fleshed out than in TNG (Kira is pretty much the most interesting and three-dimensional character in the whole series), and unlike Troi and Crusher they aren't given stereotypically feminine professions. Plus the Wesley counterpart of DS9 is actually a cool character too, showing the kind of potential Wesley might've had if they hadn't made him into a Mary Sue.

As much as like TNG, I do feel that compared to DS9 it suffers from being so episodic, and not being allowed to have longer story arcs. Data and Worf get a decent character arc in TNG (though Worf's story gets even better when he migrates to DS9), and I guess Picard has something of an arc too (learning to appreciate home and family), but mostly everything stays static compared to to the massive changes everyone and everything in DS9 goes through.

And I'm not saying episodic series are necessary better than arc-based ones (some of the best eps in both TNG and DS9 are self-enclosed stories, like "The Inner Light" or "Far Beyond the Stars"), but in TNG is extremely frustrating in that the characters always forget the lessons they learned in the previous episodes. Like, after the episode with Lal, Data almost never mentions her again, even when you'd expect him to (like when he meets Dr. Soong and they discuss families), nor does he try to repeat the experiment while taking into account the mistakes he made with Lal. That's the kind of negative continuity you would not see in a dramatic series anymore, and it's one thing TNG shows its age whereas DS9 still holds up.