Star Trek: Classic or Dud?

rewatched the first appearance of Tony Todd as Worf's brother Kurn on TNG recently. good stuff

Tony Todd's DS9 episodes are incredible tearjerkers.

Just watched The Visitor for the first time today! Great episode

voyager 2.02 features Kar, a young kid.

who is, from the first moment he opens his mouth, the same guy who played Nog in ds9.

nog

Meantime, a state o' the franchise report

https://variety.com/2024/tv/features/star-trek-future-starfleet-academy-section-31-michelle-yeoh-1235952301/

Started watching Enterprise. Grudgingly having to accept its not actually that bad after all. The temporal cold war stuff should be interesting (only halfway thru S1 so far)

mr veg really liked it at the time, i only half-watched & peaced out pretty quick. the only thing i liked was singing the theme song lol

maybe i’ll revisit one day

it's okay (and if you're halfway thru S1 and still think it's not bad then you'll be totally fine!)

as ever, the non-humans are the most interesting characters. yes that includes porthos

the theme song IS good tho

she got saddled with some truly egregious crap, but i think jolene blaylock was really very good -- certainly much better than bakula

The theme song + being weird and horny about the Vulcan XO gave it a worse reputation than it deserves. Still the worst pre-Discovery series but not awful.

Yeah its like, Trek if they put it on NBC like a season of NCIS or something. I cant put my finger on it, maybe its the cadre of actors? And yes, a lot of gratuitous tightly-clinging outfits both on T'Pol and sometimes on other female crew, which, ugh.

i'd put enterprise above tng, ds9, and voyager, even when they get into "the expanse" and there's that dumb AF xindi nonsense with one xindi species that is insect, one xindi species that is monkeys, one xindi species that is reptiles, one xindi species that is fish etc like it was written by a 5 year old. oh the british dude is unwittingly hilarious as well "would you mind awfully if i sacrifice myself here for the good of the crew, captain?"

re: network trash serial vibe, weirdly many of the actors/producers ended up doing 24 so it was definitely the era for neo-con trek. the xindi "5 species" stuff i thought was at least ambitious and kind of new for trek though yeah the entire series was very much a 5-year old's concept of trek.

the actual star trek kid's show is surprisingly good! though picking jason mantzoukas to voice any character puts up this hurdle of "hey why does that alien sound like jason mantzoukas?"

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/beam-us-back-scotty/

I only got through a handful of Enterprise episodes, I just couldn't stand how enamored the show was of Trip.

Speaking of terrible Trek shows, how's the last season of Disco? Still a skip for someone who stopped hate-watching last season? I don't want to go into the thread for fear of spoilers (which I realize is kind of silly in this case).

I don't know what the level of showrunner drama is compared to earlier but it feels like a show that's not at all concerned with winning over people who didn't like any of the previous seasons the way Picard did in its last one.

would recommend continued hate-watching tbh - actually hate probably too strong a word - but i enjoy being lightly infuriated by it - has definitely settled down into a kind of “late Voyager” style where they are just doing it cos they do it and have surrendered any ambitions to shock or surprise

it feels like a show that's not at all concerned with winning over people who didn't like any of the previous seasons

See I dont agree, I feel like theyre pulling out way more fanservice in this season than ever? But, I already mentioned that in the DISCO thread.

finally they r making Disco for the true fans (ie nobody)

A very silly Enterprise ep featuring Jeffry Coombs AND Ethan Phillips as Ferengi. I am confused - I assume this is the first time humans meet Ferengi because in a prior ep at the monastery someone mentions 'em and all the humans shrug.

But wasnt there a terrible S1 episode of TNG where they meet Ferengi and act like they never have before?

the enterprise nx-01 (ffs why do i know that) encounters several things/people/species that based on lore it absolutely should not -- but they fudge it by never letting the things/people/species be named

it's garbage, but they either couldn't think up any better interlocutors or felt they needed half-assed references to known entities for people to watch

Yeah I get the impression one has to do a bit of hand-waving when it comes to how canon Enterprise was compared to everything else.

IIRC they get around it by never saying the word Ferengi, they're just an unnamed species of space pirate

Really too bad TNG didn't go with Roddenberry's concept of horny space pirates with enormous codpieces.

https://stephenliddell.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/lord-flashheart.jpg

woof!

jeffrey combs is what sold me on enterprise. prize ham

search function suggests i saw more of voyager in lockdown than i thought:

> daily voyager repeats now on season 3 in the UK.
> ― koogs, Friday, 6 August 2021

yesterday's episode was Tuvix, season S02E24, which i'm sure i saw as part of the above. so i can ignore the next 130 episodes 8)