Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series

[lazzer grardaion?]

I love Star Trek. I grew up with Star Trek. Star Trek is very important to me.

As a TV series, though not every episode is great, or even good, I can't think of any other series that has so consistently delivered great sci-fi ideas in 45-minute chunks. It delivers so many different kinds of story. It manages to be fresh and rewatchable because every episode is going to be something different.

You've got your courtroom dramas:

Political intrigue:



Character drama:



You've got stories centered on deep philosophical questions, wacky episodes where the emotionless android Data tries to make a relationship work, or spooky episodes where people start having weird flashbacks in their waking hours, and slowly begin to realize they're all having flashbacks of being in the same place:

There are so many different kinds of Star Trek episode, and the fact that they could pull that off is a testament to both the versatility of the actors, and to the degree that they really *inhabited* these characters.

And man, let me tell you, as much as I like Star Wars, I don't want to live in Star Wars. There's a big Galactic Empire? They're probably gonna murder everybody I know! Everybody's at war all the time! Sucks!

Fully luxury automated space communism? Encountering new forms of life and new civilizations? I want to learn about Klingon opera! Just, uh, pretend I'm doing the Drake meme thing:

: Endless war between good and evil in a cycle that will never end because the movies make too much money

: Fully luxury automated space Communism! Sometimes war, but usually not.

Have you never watched Star Trek? The original series is classic, but very hokey, and has some very questionable '60s gender politics. You should start with Star Trek: The Next Generation. Except, uh, the first season of TNG is very very bad. The standard advice I've heard is that you should jump in when Riker grows his beard, which happens partway through season 2. I say you can just start in season 3 if you don't want to fuck around trying to figure out which episode that is. The whole show is very episodic, so don't worry too much about skipping around.

Do you want to hear some schlubby internet nerds tell you their favorite Star Trek TNG episodes? Yes, I think you do:

In seriousness, I really really like hearing these guys talk about things that they really really like, after having them get famous for spending 100000 hours ripping on things they hate. This might also serve as good advice if you're looking to get into Star Trek, but don't know where to start first.

Talk about your favorite episodes!
Talk about things you didn't understand/appreciate if you watched it as a child!
Talk about how the very goofy looking tar monster from season 1 scared the *shit* out of you!
Talk about the couple episodes from Voyager/Enterprise that you think are actually pretty good!

Star Trek: Picard is the worst, stupidest, most poorly thought and planned out series maybe ever. The show is dumber than LOST, and it shits all over everything I love about Star Trek. Talk about that if you want to! I bet that people on this forum for a podcast where nerds make fun of dumb shit will like to make fun of dumb shit.

[Agent (gobble, gobble) Coop]

I love Star Trek. I grew up with Star Trek. Star Trek is very important to me.

As a TV series, though not every episode is great, or even good, I can't think of any other series that has so consistently delivered great sci-fi ideas in 45-minute chunks. It delivers so many different kinds of story. It manages to be fresh and rewatchable because every episode is going to be something different.

You've got your courtroom dramas:

Political intrigue:



Character drama:



You've got stories centered on deep philosophical questions, wacky episodes where the emotionless android Data tries to make a relationship work, or spooky episodes where people start having weird flashbacks in their waking hours, and slowly begin to realize they're all having flashbacks of being in the same place:

There are so many different kinds of Star Trek episode, and the fact that they could pull that off is a testament to both the versatility of the actors, and to the degree that they really *inhabited* these characters.

And man, let me tell you, as much as I like Star Wars, I don't want to live in Star Wars. There's a big Galactic Empire? They're probably gonna murder everybody I know! Everybody's at war all the time! Sucks!

Fully luxury automated space communism? Encountering new forms of life and new civilizations? I want to learn about Klingon opera! Just, uh, pretend I'm doing the Drake meme thing:

: Endless war between good and evil in a cycle that will never end because the movies make too much money

: Fully luxury automated space Communism! Sometimes war, but usually not.

Have you never watched Star Trek? The original series is classic, but very hokey, and has some very questionable '60s gender politics. You should start with Star Trek: The Next Generation. Except, uh, the first season of TNG is very very bad. The standard advice I've heard is that you should jump in when Riker grows his beard, which happens partway through season 2. I say you can just start in season 3 if you don't want to fuck around trying to figure out which episode that is. The whole show is very episodic, so don't worry too much about skipping around.

Do you want to hear some schlubby internet nerds tell you their favorite Star Trek TNG episodes? Yes, I think you do:

In seriousness, I really really like hearing these guys talk about things that they really really like, after having them get famous for spending 100000 hours ripping on things they hate. This might also serve as good advice if you're looking to get into Star Trek, but don't know where to start first.

Talk about your favorite episodes!
Talk about things you didn't understand/appreciate if you watched it as a child!
Talk about how the very goofy looking tar monster from season 1 scared the *shit* out of you!
Talk about the couple episodes from Voyager/Enterprise that you think are actually pretty good!

Star Trek: Picard is the worst, stupidest, most poorly thought and planned out series maybe ever. The show is dumber than LOST, and it shits all over everything I love about Star Trek. Talk about that if you want to! I bet that people on this forum for a podcast where nerds make fun of dumb shit will like to make fun of dumb shit.

Neelix Rules Everything Around Me

[lazzer grardaion?]

Neelix Rules Everything Around Me

I am obligated to inform you that Neelix is capital-C Cancelled:

[Agent (gobble, gobble) Coop]

Neelix Rules Everything Around Me

I am obligated to inform you that Neelix is capital-C Cancelled:

I'll never forget the episode where Tuvok relaxs by attacking holodeck Neelix

[EYE OF ZA]

I was watching the original series episodes and fascinated by two things. First, I found myself resisting the urge to write Star Trek fanfic, mostly because when you see an episode that's flawed it's usually broken in some easy and obvious way--it's like seeing a picture on a wall that's slightly off, you just want to reach out and straighten it. I am not surprised at all that fanfic in its modern form started with Star Trek, and that the first pairings were all from the Kirk/Spock/Bones love triangle because it really does come off like Bones is the ex who's jealous that Kirk wound up with Spock.

The second thing is that the episodes vary wildly in quality and people remember Trouble with Tribbles not because haha funny space furbies but because it's an actually good episode in a show where like one out of ten episodes is worth watching. In most other episodes Kirk's toxic masculinity is treated like "ah he's just a Stern Father which is what all children need when growing up!" or some platitude about being the captain of a ship. In the Tribbles episode, it's treated as a joke. I would not be surprised to learn that it's that episode's specific version of all of the characters that became the pop-culture zeitgeist version of those characters.

[Agent (gobble, gobble) Coop]

Can I get some bulbs for Tasha Yar?

[Frank West]

Choo choo here comes the hot take police:

- DS9 is the best star trek and it's not even close. Taking the supposed utopian future of the original series and TNG (which sure had a lot of terrible things going on for a utopia!) and showing that, actually, a lot of bad stuff still happens, there's still politics and bigotry and so on, and even the federation isn't perfect is exactly what I wanted. It helps ground the series, too, and worked really well with the focus on ongoing plot and character development (which the writers had wanted to do in TNG since like, season 4, but were unable to.)
- Pulaski ruled.
- Tasha also ruled. Her leaving is probably the worst thing that happened to TNG.
- Star trek: Picard is basically a fine show. It doesn't feel much like TNG, but it does feel like a reaction to it, and I think it did a good job of making a prestige TV show out of star trek. The ending is astoundingly bad, though, enough that it makes the rest of the show worse.
- Oh, Lwaxana rules too.

[Shell Game]

- Oh, Lwaxana rules too.

I WAS WAITING.

[Lemon]

I have a Star Trek opinion I would like to share with you, but first let me itemize the ways that Frank West is wrong...

- DS9 is the best star trek and it's not even close. Taking the supposed utopian future of the original series and TNG (which sure had a lot of terrible things going on for a utopia!) and showing that, actually, a lot of bad stuff still happens, there's still politics and bigotry and so on, and even the federation isn't perfect is exactly what I wanted. It helps ground the series, too, and worked really well with the focus on ongoing plot and character development (which the writers had wanted to do in TNG since like, season 4, but were unable to.)

WRONG! DS9 starts out as a fun show with a very good premise, both because of and in spite of the even hammier acting that TNG had.  René Auberjonois is a grumpy clown, Quark is a children's theater production of Al Swearengen, Dax gets to do fun genderqueer stuff, and  Cisco will apply ACTING to every line unlucky enough to be assigned to him. This is all great.

But DS9 had the fucking Bajorans. Utterly humorous mystics who drove increasing amounts of plot into a war of suckers. Like, the historical parallels are obvious enough, but after hearing enough of their whinging, I also want to see them in slave camps, except sew their mouths shut like in Abe's Odyssey. Fuck literally everything about the Bajorans.

Also, again, as time goes on, the central premise of the show (This is a hotel by a highway onramp, nobody who matters gives a fuck) which gives it some much promise, gets ruined by suddenly turning the highway onramp into something important, and then it's a whole bunch of talk about war. And spacewar is unbelievably boring.

- Pulaski ruled.

WRONG! Pelaski's primary purpose was to feed roboracist lines to Data for his reaction. Also, to be a seatfiller for somebody whose actual name is Gates McFadden.

- Tasha also ruled. Her leaving is probably the worst thing that happened to TNG.

WRONG! And I now think you have a fetish for women who are biologically incapable of acting. Tell me Frank, did you really like Lisa from The Room as well?

- Oh, Lwaxana rules too.

Okay, yeah. I mean, yeah.

---

As you might infer, I like TNG quite a bit. The more gimmicky the episode the better. I like all the Holodeck stuff, up to and including the Moriarty crap. I'll happily watch the private detective ones even tho they are objectively crummy. Q stuff is A-OK with me as well. However, I skip right past any Klingon-centric episode. There's really very little for any of those to explore, it's just some sort of internal game to see which writer can get them to say "to die with honor" the most times.

I haven't yet tried any of the Discovery. Boots tells me it gets good by the 3rd season, but that's too long to wait.

Also I didn't know anything about it and so tried to watch an episode of Star Trek The Lower Decks. I wish I hadn't done that.

[Frank West]

Aha, my contextless list got bait, and now I have an excuse to talk about WHY I like DS9! You fell right into my trap.

Also, again, as time goes on, the central premise of the show (This is a hotel by a highway onramp, nobody who matters gives a fuck) which gives it some much promise, gets ruined by suddenly turning the highway onramp into something important, and then it's a whole bunch of talk about war. And spacewar is unbelievably boring.

This stops being the premise of the show halfway through the first episode, when the wormhole opens up and suddenly bajor goes from "planet in recovery that nobody is gonna care about anytime soon" to universal hotspot. It's not space offramp, it's space casablanca with a bit of space frontier western. It also does have a ton of gimmick episodes, which lean way further into their gimmick than TNG episodes do.

Otherwise, the fact that Bajor actually has problems that real life places have, and that everyone both on and off bajor are flawed, is what makes me like DS9 so much. I love TNG too! If I feel a panic attack coming on, TNG is my go-to TV show, because it's generally pretty chill even when they're being shot at, and they always manage to solve their problems and reset everything to the status quo (and the constant background humming + generally quiet voices is very calming.) If I want a show where it feels like I'm seeing real people I care about do real things that feel like they have any kind of impact, I like DS9 better. The way it gradually evolves from "worse TNG" to "character-driven show" to eventually becoming an outright serial with ongoing plots is very good, to me.

Plus most of the war is space politics, with out that much actual combat. The absolute worst part of star trek is when they spend 5 minutes yelling about shooting lasers at each other and I'm supposed to pretend like the combat is interesting, and TNG somehow does that way more often than DS9 despite DS9 being about a war. TNG also tends to use the combat as the actual answer to the episode's problems, and since it always boils down to "pew pew modulate the lasers different, boom, we win!" it never feels deserved or interesting, whereas on DS9 it's more common for the combat to be something that happens along the way.

DS9's bad episodes are WAY worse than TNG's, though. Like, TNG at it's worst is usually just really boring, DS9 at it's worst is REAL bad. DS9 also has a long stretch in both season 1 and 2 of insanely boring episodes, which even TNG's first season doesn't match. Plus, if you're there specifically to watch unconnected space adventure episodes, than DS9 was actively trying not to do that a lot of the time, so it's definitely a show for fewer people than TNG was.

__

I think I liked tasha and pulaski for similar reasons I like DS9: they both had more flaws and therefore felt more like people. Tasha had a hard upbringing and had clearly dealt with shit that none of the other main cast had. Pulaski, on the other hand, was the only main character on TNG who would ever have an argument with anyone, or call people on their bullshit. Yah it was tiring that half the time she was being robo-racist, but fuck roddenberry's idea of a utopia, there would totally still be argumentative robo-racists! It's totally possible I would have gotten tired of her if she stuck around though.

And I now think you have a fetish for women who are biologically incapable of acting.

I shared my F-List with you in confidence!

[Turtle]

- Oh, Lwaxana rules too.

Lwaxana is the absolute worst and I will not back down from this position. She is fucking terrible. She is selfish, sexually harasses everyone within 5 feet of her, and when she's not being an intentional inconvenience, she is being an unintentional inconvenience. The only episode in either TNG or DS9 where her character is anything but infuriating is the episode where she is dealing with the trauma of her lost child and I resent that they made me hate her for 6 seasons before dropping dead child trauma on me like that.

[Turtle]

René Auberjonois is a grumpy clown, Quark is a children's theater production of Al Swearengen

Yeah and they're the best comedy duo in the franchise, perfect pals.

[EYE OF ZA]

To follow up on my TOSpinions, there's two things I miss from the early era, even though the average quality was all over the place, and those two things are kind of related.

First, it was made before a bunch of the stuff in Star Trek got systematized, so literally anything goes. It's interesting to see all these premise-driven episodes compared to the canon-driven episodes that came in later series. There's an open-endedness to the world that's refreshing to see, especially compared to how self-referential later Star Trek becomes.

And second, while redshirts are an old joke, a lot of people in TOS do just straight up die. There's a scene in one episode where some random guy gets turned into this fist-sized sugar cube thing and the episode's bad guy is like "this is everything that made him unique, compressed down into base elements" and then just crushes it in his hand and goes "and now he's gone." It's campy, it's kind of ridiculous that all these people you've never seen before die to establish the stakes...but it still works.

A huge amount of Star Trek these days feels hamstrung by trying to follow the canon of like seven different shows and twelve movies while also trying to be nostalgic while also trying to be new. And while there's a lot of interesting work put into it, honestly I'd like to see something today that tries to be what Star Trek was in its time, rather than trying to remind me of what Star Trek was like when Seth MacFarlane was a child.

[The Smoking Dad]

Lwaxana was a character I hated for a long time but only recently came around to, I just realized that it’s very funny that in the space future with all kinds of alien cultures there’s still obnoxious horny moms out there causing a damn ruckus.

[Mr. Hunky Academia]

Can I get some bulbs for Tasha Yar?

Oh no, I got Tasha Yar and Ro Laren mixed up (again). Please give me back my bulb.