Star Trek: Classic or Dud?

that being said i get why people love it & why there’s such a diehard fanbase but i think for TNG ~for me~ it may also come down to a “you had to be there”?

It really was a case of an accident working out, in many ways, and retrospectively the gamble on a non-network/non-cable live action series -- it was syndicated! insane to think about from this distance -- was kinda nuts; there's no way that Babylon 5 would have gotten any similar traction with their path if TNG hadn't shown it could be done, and I very much doubt an original non-franchise series could have been the trailblazer too. And in practical terms there really wasn't anything else around out there that fit the bill -- I'm wracking my brain to think of what other mid-late 80s new TV sf was out there pre- or just after TNG hit and all I can think of are the 80s Twilight Zone as well as Amazing Stories and of course both were anthologies; V as a TV series had only lasted a season and was done in '85. TNG really had the field to itself as best as I can remember, so a lot of people invested in it and I sure did out of the gate. (The great exception for a lot of us would probably be Robotech but of course that was its own hammered-together mythos for an American audience as well as being animation; add on Transformers et al if you like but the point remains that TNG as live action held its own space for a while there.)

I like Voyager, the show is much more about the characters’ relationships than in TNG— of course I like TNG better, but a deep soft spot for Voyager

Table otm voyager is lovely

7, doc, tuvok, neelix all great characters IMO

Yes almost all of the humans are awful but the non humans carry it

tuvix

Poor Picard - he had to go through a lot of shit.
Riker had a much better time.

FWIW

https://trekmovie.com/2022/10/28/kate-mulgrew-reveals-the-conditions-she-gave-alex-kurtzman-for-a-return-as-live-action-janeway/

"There’s been a hue and a cry of late." Im always pleased to see this phrase used

It’s weird to say Mulgrew was undeserved by seven seasons of an hourlong show in which she was the top-billed character, but imo the character really lacked definition except for rare moments of kickassitude when under duress. But seemed like a waste of a good performer.

Is Mulgrew subtweeeting Picard?

We need a passionate love affair between Picard and Janeway on the holodeck (and then the real Janeway discovers it)

Passionate love affair between picard and katie o’claire

Sorry - katie o’clare

Passionate love affair between Janeway and Seven much more appealing, just saying— Seven as hard femme top and Janeway as soft femme bottom, whew. (My dyke friends agree with me).

supposedly mulgrew was furious when jeri ryan was brought on and personally treated her like shit. so make it a hate fuck

If Geneviève Bujold had stuck with the gig, Janeway and Picard could have ended up shouting weird space French at each other.

lol

Mr DAta is fully functional

interesting re: Mulgrew and Ryan, the scenes they did as their relationship developed were really great and felt quite believable ! good acting

Was listening to a podcast the other day where they were talking about how these days if they're recommended a show and find out it's like 5 seasons, 10 eps it's "fuck no that's too much", but seven seasons of twenty five ep Star Trek shows they can just rewatch over and over. OTM imo.

I started bingeing TNG in 2015 and I'm... still on season 4? I think my rewatch is going to take longer than the actual show

I've been quicker with DS9 (on season 3 after a year)

What helps with Trek is that there are always skippable episodes and it's okay if you have a quick snooze during parts of them

Whereas several seasons of, say, The Americans is less time than rewatching Voyager but demands a lot more ATTENTION

Yeah, we're watching the Americans at the moment (a rewatch for me) and sometimes we have to take a break for a week or so because it's so GRIM. And then we have to watch the recaps so that we can remember where the hell we were. With TNG, as you say, you can wander in and out, fold laundry, cook dinner, have a nap, and still follow what's happening. And it doesn't matter because it all resets in the next episode anyway. Winner.

Yes. Feature not a bug, if it's still okay to use that cliche.

Big reason why Strange New Worlds hit so well. While there’s more active storylines across episodes for sure, each one had its self-contained story regardless, so in respects it nicely handles old and new.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJHn8-O7mJA

I like the times Picard in TNG has do things that seem out of character just because that's what the script says - like when he learns an Admiral ciommited graves offenses and he's just kind of like "yeesh! what were you thinking! instead of informing starflett
ALso Jameson reminds me of "Itchy" from teh wookie christmas special

Too Short a Season

Still slogging thru DS9 when I find time. Latest watch was "Time's Orphan" (I skipped "profit and lace" cos I hate Ferengi eps).

This epsiode was... alarming! Molly is pulled into some time portal, becomes a feral with no language or social skills (this makes no sense, she was EIGHT when this happened, not a baby), so their solution is not to resocialize her, not to give her therapy, not to hand her tp caring family or specialists but... send her back into the wormhole to deal with it on her own gbye Molly.

WAHT.

That’s life in the wormhole. I was watching DS nine when it was on Amazon prime video and it got wiskeda way to Paramount plus. I have paramount plus but I had long advertisements. I guess you have to pay even more to get the ads to go away?

No I'm watching it on netflix?

i’m still enjoying Voyager sbut we’re only early days, slowly into first third of s1

Every epsode I watch I’m newly horrified by Kess’s wig. It’s upsetting.

I love it whenever Janeway just says “fuck it, let’s blast them.” She’s very good.

Better be coffee in that nebula.

In terms of questionable DS9 decisions, remember when they made the atmosphere unliveable for Cardassians on some planet so they could switch it over for another planet the Cardassians had made uninhabitable for humans? Was totally convinced they were bluffing but no, they went full chemical warfare!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VMyePEToYE

I was surprised to learn industrial light and magic made a physical enterprise for STNG I assumed it was cgi - it seems like something to make easily with cgi

Not back in the mid-80s, even 'just' for TV.

Yeah, look how fake the ships in Babylon 5 look now, which started just as TNG was finishing

For a show that seemed like it had no aesthetic at the time, it has a hell of an aesthetic. So much more than “HR boardroom in space”. A too short period of time, post-80s macho but pre-90s irony.

LCARS is brilliant imo

Michael Okuda is still active on FB and regularly posts neat little design tidbits from over the years

I'm pretty sure the original STNG episodes had way cheesier effects too and got redone at some point?

I had this kind of apologist bullshit! Give me the original toasters

https://trekmovie.com/trek-remastered/tng-remastered/

I think that Mulgrew has been phoning in her lives on Prodigy but thankfully we got a body swap episode that was a lot of fun.

Jane ways

pic.twitter.com/KXQjQ3xTEV

— Star Trek Minus Context (@NoContextTrek) December 20, 2022

The latest episode of Prodigy is actually really good! Dark for a kids' show but also paid off the season-long arc in a way that I was complaining about earlier here (kinda? spoilerly)!

I've seen a reevaluation of Enterprise in the last several years, if not critically then along fans. But as someone who found Voyager fatally corny, should it still be a skip for me?

I've been watching enterprise recently (Pick TV) they are just about to finish season 4 (of 4). it's not holding my attention tbh even if the season 3 story-arch was an attempt at something new.

the sexing up of the female crew members is a bit blatant.

leeee you seem pretty into trek so i think it’d probably be worthwhile. and seasons 3-4 are pretty solid.

that said there are some v. dire episodes and koogs otm about the sexing up. as ever, the best characters are the non-humans

Yeah I could never get past how they treated the vulcan in Enterprise, all the gratuitous shower scenes and whatever in the few eps I saw. I also for some reason cannot accept Bakula as a Trek universe actor, I dont know why.

i don't think bakula was ideal, but also they made him really whiny about 'why won't the vulcans give us all their tech right now!'

that conflict was kinda interesting, but no one wants a whiny captain (and also the vulcans were right)

anyway if you like, this dude (who writes trek-associated fiction and has also held forth on all the other tv series) is in the midst of a rewatch; he's just finished the second season. obviously there are mad spoilers, but it might give you a sense of what is worthwhile

https://www.tor.com/series/star-trek-enterprise-rewatch

The combination of the casting of Bakula and Blalock (sexy Vulcan lady) were in fact two of the reasons I passed on the show when they announced it; a third reason was because of Trek saturation at the time, which maybe doesn't bode well for the billion series going on right now, or just shows how much I and/or the current TV landscape have changed in the last 25 years.