Snakes In The Ball Pit => How I choose to spend my time => TeeVee => Topic started by: lazzer grardaion? on December 04, 2020, 08:25:46 pm
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: lazzer grardaion? on December 04, 2020, 08:25:46 pm
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:
(https://i.imgur.com/p92rrBG.jpg)
Character drama:
(https://i.imgur.com/o1V5GEj.jpg)
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:
(https://i.imgur.com/VGpyXUz.png) : Endless war between good and evil in a cycle that will never end because the movies make too much money
(https://i.imgur.com/2652joY.png): 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.
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: Agent (gobble, gobble) Coop on December 04, 2020, 08:32:35 pm
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:
(https://i.imgur.com/p92rrBG.jpg)
Character drama:
(https://i.imgur.com/o1V5GEj.jpg)
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:
(https://i.imgur.com/VGpyXUz.png) : Endless war between good and evil in a cycle that will never end because the movies make too much money
(https://i.imgur.com/2652joY.png): 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. ZOMBOZO Evil clown, December 04, 2020, 08:25:46 pm
Neelix Rules Everything Around Me
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: lazzer grardaion? on December 04, 2020, 08:44:44 pm
I'll never forget the episode where Tuvok relaxs by attacking holodeck Neelix
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: EYE OF ZA on December 05, 2020, 10:13:19 am
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.
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: Agent (gobble, gobble) Coop on December 05, 2020, 10:56:01 am
Can I get some bulbs for Tasha Yar?
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: Frank West on December 05, 2020, 01:35:04 pm
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.
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: Shell Game on December 05, 2020, 02:03:38 pm
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: Lemon on December 05, 2020, 05:58:43 pm
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.)Frank West, December 05, 2020, 01:35:04 pm
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.
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.Frank West, December 05, 2020, 01:35:04 pm
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?
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.
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: Frank West on December 05, 2020, 06:41:10 pm
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!
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: Turtle on December 05, 2020, 10:22:16 pm
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.
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: Turtle on December 05, 2020, 10:26:18 pm
René Auberjonois is a grumpy clown, Quark is a children's theater production of Al SwearengenLemon, December 05, 2020, 05:58:43 pm
Yeah and they're the best comedy duo in the franchise, perfect pals.
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: EYE OF ZA on December 05, 2020, 11:31:05 pm
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.
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: The Smoking Dad on December 06, 2020, 01:10:17 am
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.
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: Mr. Hunky Academia on December 06, 2020, 02:13:44 am
I was very prepared to make a ton of words happen at you, but i got to the end, saw this and... y'know? Agree to disagree on whatever else, we agree where it counts.
Oh no, I got Tasha Yar and Ro Laren mixed up (again). Please give me back my bulb. Mr. Hunky Academia, December 06, 2020, 02:13:44 am
Ro kicks even more ass
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: Agent (gobble, gobble) Coop on December 06, 2020, 10:42:29 am
(https://i.ibb.co/kXFbDmq/Eoh6pd-SUw-AAoq-VL.jpg)
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: chai tea latte on December 06, 2020, 12:59:51 pm
I think it would be really cool if Dax and Major Kira hung out more, and kissed. That's kinda my only star trek opinion so far.
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: Boots Raingear on December 06, 2020, 02:55:25 pm
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. Lemon, December 05, 2020, 05:58:43 pm
It's now doing its best to lose me again, but I do like that it's still keeping up with plotlines that resolve in one episode.
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: auaurorau on December 06, 2020, 04:23:22 pm
All star trek is alien to me. My experience with the series is: I've seen the ship made in Minecraft, I watched an episode with friends five years ago (I remember nothing about it), and I recognize Riker, Picard, and Data.
To get what the fuss is about, I watched a star trek inspired by this thread. The star trek I watched was The Next Generation's season 3 episode 1: "an angry man and his egg". I don't get what the fuss is about.
I appreciated that the episode made the nasty man very nasty and unlikable. A well-acted nasty person. But that meant the episode was centered around this rude and vaguely sexist doctor. I didn't appreciate that. I would've rather had the whole episode centered about the gray-dressed boy and his mom. (I don't know their names, and I think his mom was only ever called "doctor".)
I feel like I watched a naruto filler episode. Zoom into computer block 35 with a magnification of one thousand. Expel the sage chakra through your feet. It's all the same. Maybe that was just a particularly mediocre episode hampered by my dislike for the angry doctor.
I get that there's a message of pacifism. But it really wasn't both sides at fault, like Picard said in the end after the man made a sad face and said sorry after 40 minutes of low key toxicity and murder. It was just the doctor's fault. He should've been shot out of the airlock pretty early on, and this could've been an interesting episode. But I'm glad the conflict wasn't solved by the nanites going in the doctor's brain and playing imagined baseball with him, because if that had happened, I would never watch a star trek again.
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: lazzer grardaion? on December 06, 2020, 05:00:29 pm
All star trek is alien to me. My experience with the series is: I've seen the ship made in Minecraft, I watched an episode with friends five years ago (I remember nothing about it), and I recognize Riker, Picard, and Data. auaurorau, December 06, 2020, 04:23:22 pm
^Gonna say this: there are so many different kinds of Star Trek episode, I bet you will find some that you love. Some episodes I really like that might serve as better starting points:
S3E21 - Hollow Pursuits - Introduces Reginald Barkley, a weirdo with anxiety who spends too much time playing future video games. A fun character and a lighthearted episode.
S4E21 - The Drumhead - an excellent courtroom drama episode, in which investigation of a spy onboard the ship turns into something more sinister.
S6E5 - Schisms - My personal favorite Spooky Episode. Not gonna spoil too much of it because it's fun and spooky.
If it doesn't click , though, you should drop Star Trek and watch Stargate SG-1 instead. Then we can start a Stargate megathread, too.
ANYWAYS
I want to talk about Worf.
I never loved Worf as a kid, I found the Klingon episodes kind of boring and impenetrable, and in the first couple seasons Worf is mostly there to get whomped by the monster of the week to prove the situation is serious.
As an adult, I love Worf so much. This is mostly because Worf is a huge Klingon weeaboo.
Allow me to explain:
Worf, the Klingon, was raised by humans. Specifically, he was raised by the Rozhenkos, a couple of very bubbly and friendly eastern-European humans (https://www.jta.org/jewniverse/2011/worf-is-jewish).
Worf wasn't brought up in the Klingon empire, and he didn't learn about Klingon values first-hand. He grew up reading about, and trying to absorb Klingon culture into his identity, based on what they *say* they value as a society (honor, valor, courage, etc.)
Klingon episodes are great because you get to see Worf, a very sweet boy, who is trying his best, experience the collision between the values he's been *told* he's supposed to have as a Klingon, and which he personally has tried to uphold, and the reality that Klingons are just people, some of whom are dicks.
It's also so much fun to see how much better Picard is at playing the Klingon game of posturing and politics than Worf. Picard never holds it over him, though.
Also, for real, Worf and Troi make a much better couple than Riker and Troi. I ship it.
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: Agent (gobble, gobble) Coop on December 06, 2020, 05:04:52 pm
The best Worf episode is the one with the klingon-romulans on the prison plant. Worf is like "I must teach you to be true klingons!" And its like "wait a second Worf..."
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: lazzer grardaion? on December 06, 2020, 05:12:03 pm
The best Worf episode is the one with the klingon-romulans on the prison plant. Worf is like "I must teach you to be true klingons!" And its like "wait a second Worf..." Agent (gobble, gobble) Coop, December 06, 2020, 05:04:52 pm
I just re-watched that one recently, and although it's not my absolute favorite, it is still really sweet to see Worf teaching these youngsters, because it really highlights how these ideas of Klingon culture, even if they aren't necessarily representative of the actual society, are reassuring and comforting to Worf, and that's the part that he wants to share.
Also, coming back to episodes that are Just Fun™:
S7E11 - Parallels - Worf accidentally collapses the multiverse.
EDIT: Regarding Lwaxana Troi discourse, I think I like Lwaxana because she reminds me of this kind of lady:
(https://i.imgur.com/4EBi9vAl.jpg)
And that explains equally well why other people do not like her.
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: EYE OF ZA on December 06, 2020, 07:56:22 pm
I don't know much about TNG episodes, but watching a Star Trek episode at random is an absolute crapshoot. The quality vacillates wildly between "well written and compelling exploration of a premise" and "oh no someone has god powers and needs to be spanked by a stern dad to get him to stop". It's not well-liked because of its consistent quality, it's well liked because it has a bunch of really good episodes, a bunch of decent episodes, and a bunch of episodes where you laugh about how you're supposed to take fake rubber vomit getting flopped around on strings as a serious alien threat.
Regarding Lwaxana Troi discourse, I think I like Lwaxana because she reminds me of this kind of lady:
Same. TNG came out right when the New Agey aunt who overshares and is always a little too horny was a big Thing. (I remember there's a character from Tiny Toons, which is right about from the same time period, whose whole gag is that she's also extremely New Agey.) Lwaxana has just flown in from Boulder and she's here to talk to Picard about how his sacral chakra needs cleansing.
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: Lemon on December 06, 2020, 10:15:51 pm
I'd actually question if I could watch & enjoy Star Trek without the aid of nostalgia. I think maybe I could? There's fun to be had in a lot of it but also I first watched it when TNG was actually on the air, so it all lives in a certain headspace.
I like it cause it's campy and I like it because it's imaginative, but I also like it because it's fairly uniquely about values. Ethical correctness and scientific curiosity are always, always always an imperative. That's neat. Complicated antiheroes are overrated. Brooding antiheroes are dull paragons for dull people.
But again, I recognize a rose tint to this. I never watched Doctor Who as a child and didn't really even consider it until I felt like I was older than its target demo. As such, the little bit I've experienced I've recognized a lot of the same traits in that show that I'd laud Star Trek for, except in Doctor Who's case, I don't care at all about the final product. It feels populist and overlong and none of the parables I've experienced (again, limited exposure here) have felt profound or even enjoyable. Just a long show that seems to take itself pretty seriously full of sci-fi tropes that don't have consequence for me.
I don't know if there's real qualitative difference there beyond my own mindset in experiencing them
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: Salubrious Rex on December 06, 2020, 10:55:26 pm
I only got into Star Trek in the past couple of years, and have only seen TNG so far. I like it a lot, I even thought season 1 was fine. S2E9, The Measure of a Man is one of my favourite episodes of anything, it's great. My standards for what a good Star Trek episode is might be a bit low but I regularly find myself being impressed by an episode. The main cast are well written, well acted characters and very well explored. It's really a delight to have a show filled with characters that I like and getting to see how they behave in every scenario under the sun.
Modern Star Trek (Picard, Discovery) looks entirely not even close to my alley, let alone up it, but I never have to watch it so I do not care.
This is all of my Star Trek thoughts and opinions.
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: EYE OF ZA on December 07, 2020, 06:11:29 am
I'd actually question if I could watch & enjoy Star Trek without the aid of nostalgia. I think maybe I could? There's fun to be had in a lot of it but also I first watched it when TNG was actually on the air, so it all lives in a certain headspace.
I like it cause it's campy and I like it because it's imaginative, but I also like it because it's fairly uniquely about values. Ethical correctness and scientific curiosity are always, always always an imperative. That's neat. Complicated antiheroes are overrated. Brooding antiheroes are dull paragons for dull people.
But again, I recognize a rose tint to this. I never watched Doctor Who as a child and didn't really even consider it until I felt like I was older than its target demo. As such, the little bit I've experienced I've recognized a lot of the same traits in that show that I'd laud Star Trek for, except in Doctor Who's case, I don't care at all about the final product. It feels populist and overlong and none of the parables I've experienced (again, limited exposure here) have felt profound or even enjoyable. Just a long show that seems to take itself pretty seriously full of sci-fi tropes that don't have consequence for me.
I don't know if there's real qualitative difference there beyond my own mindset in experiencing them Lemon, December 06, 2020, 10:15:51 pm
The big qualitative difference between the two shows is that Doctor Who is more 'family' oriented and more consistently campy, while Star Trek's aiming for a slightly older age range and generally is more serious.
Which is probably why nerds go crazy for it, the same way they do for Princess Bride or The Fifth Element--there isn't a lot of weird goofy shit these days when every media property is a franchise getting made by Disney or a company trying to replicate Disney's success.
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: Cheapskate on December 07, 2020, 08:17:11 pm
Star Trek is fundamentally a police procedural.
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: chai tea latte on December 07, 2020, 11:05:22 pm
His character is unnamed, has no lines, and is in stasis for most of the episode.
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: Frank West on December 08, 2020, 12:09:05 am
He had to shave off his beard for the role, and eat some gross shit, but he said he was okay with that as long as they let him get transported.
The only word he had to say was "Food!" over and over. However, he could not remember his line. They had to make a cue card for him and also apparently several people were behind the camera miming eating food? This sounds unbelievable, in fact, I basically don't believe it because it makes no sense. However, brent spiner said it in some obscure panel that I can't find on google, and levar burton was there and just nodded and laughed along, plus the guy who designed what the enterprise computer panels looked like independently made a twitter post about it years later:
I don't know why they would both make the same lie years apart, so it somehow must be true?
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: Shell Game on December 08, 2020, 04:32:02 am
He had to shave off his beard for the role, and eat some gross shit, but he said he was okay with that as long as they let him get transported.
The only word he had to say was "Food!" over and over. However, he could not remember his line. They had to make a cue card for him and also apparently several people were behind the camera miming eating food? This sounds unbelievable, in fact, I basically don't believe it because it makes no sense. However, brent spiner said it in some obscure panel that I can't find on google, and levar burton was there and just nodded and laughed along, plus the guy who designed what the enterprise computer panels looked like independently made a twitter post about it years later:
I don't know why they would both make the same lie years apart, so it somehow must be true? Frank West, December 08, 2020, 12:09:05 am
Frank! Your line was "FOOD!"
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: Agent (gobble, gobble) Coop on December 08, 2020, 04:37:08 pm
'Member when Seven of Nine fought The Rock? That kicked ass
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: lazzer grardaion? on December 10, 2020, 06:34:06 pm
Here is my big effortpost on Star Trek: Picard, a show you should under no circumstances pay money for.
TL;DR - It's basically the Mass Effect 3 script with the serial numbers filed off, and enough plot points yoinked out of place like Jenga blocks so you'll think there's a mystery to it.
I am also convinced that the writers of this show have not watched a single episode of Star Trek, by which I mean any of the TV series. They definitely watched the JJ Abrams trek, and probably the shitty TNG movies, but none of the shows.
The most obvious problem with the show is the plot, in which a large number of key plot points were clearly written in as 'TBD', and then they went back and figured out what the SHOCKING TWIST was later. It's a LOST-style mystery box in a mystery box that never really makes any sense. There are so many things that are just lazy cliches from other genres, that make no sense when transplanted into Star Trek.
I can't possibly summarize the whole thing with all its stupid misdirects and plot threads that go nowhere, but I'll try and chart a course through the important bits.
As a fun play-along-at-home game, I've highlighted the thrilling mysteries the show has to offer. See if you can tease out this tangled web of intrigue, and figure out which questions have non-stupid answers!
SO
We start with a dream sequence. It's about 20 years after Data died in Star Trek: Nemesis, and Picard is super duper sad about it. Note that the writers are hanging on something that happened in what is arguably the worst Star Trek movie as the emotional core of their show. Nemesis made less than Maid in Manhattan its opening weekend, but that's what the writers have chosen to build off as the emotional cornerstone of the show.
From there, we go to San Francisco of the future! A lady is in her apartment, making out with an alien who is just... a black dude, but he has eyes that blink sideways. He doesn't even get any bumpy forehead makeup. JUST THEN! Goons transport into the apartment and put a bag over the lady's head, killing the black guy with a throwing knife. The goons are yelling at each other, and they're scanning the lady with the bag on her head, saying how lucky they are that she hasn't "Activated" yet. Then, bagged lady gets "Activated", and starts suddenly displaying super Kung Fu skills, killing all the goons.
Mystery 1: Who are these goons? They're Romulans, but it's stupider than that.
Mystery 2: Who is this lady? Why does she have kung-fu powers? She's secretly a robo lady, and she doesn't know it.
Stupid Mystery: If these fuckers can transport down into somebody's apartment, why can't they transport somebody *out* of the apartment? Why do they have to go in with *throwing knives*? The goons never put, like, a device on her to help beam her out, but even if they did have to do that, wouldn't that be easier to do when she was asleep? Why THROWING KNIVES?
So, long story short, girl (name of Dahj) sees Picard talking on the future-tv, and she decides that she needs to go to him for help (why she thinks to do this is never clearly explained). She's actually a robo-clone made from Data's brain who has been programmed to think that she's human.
Mystery 3: Why was this robot lady programmed to think she's human? This one never makes sense. It's later stated that she was sent to Earth to "try and uncover a conspiracy in the Federation", but she doesn't seem to know that she's supposed to be investigating anything, she's just smooching a dude in her apartment, and she never seems to know anything or investigate anything.
So, the goons show up again, and it turns out they're Romulans. They kill the *shit* out of Dahj, and then all suicide themselves in various ways before anybody can figure out why they're doing what they're trying to do. Thankfully, Dahj has an identical twin who basically fills in for her for the rest of the plot, so it doesn't really matter!
Mystery 4: Why are Romulans suddenly so hell-bent on killing robo lady?
This one is so stupid you'd never guess it in a million years, but it is in fact the center of the show's story.
The Romulans have a secret society in their government. No, not the Tal'Shiar, another secret society. There's a double-secret super-illuminati in Romulan society called the Jad'Vash, which somehow has never ever been brought up.
I have to wonder why the writers decided to take the Romulans, who already have a well-established KGB-style secret police, and decided to add a second entirely unrelated secret group that has nothing to do with the first.
My theory is that the writers only know about the Romulans because they watched the 2009 JJ Abrams movie, in which a Romulan dude was the villain. They decided they wanted a secret society in the Romulans that was doing something evil, but then later somebody (probably the intern who they made watch TNG for them) mentioned that the Romulans already had a secret society. Then they decided they didn't give a shit.
MYSTERY WHATEVER: Okay, so why does the double-secret Romulan illuminati want to kill this robot lady?!
Here's where we get double-stupid.
A long long time ago, the Romulans found this beacon on some random planet, which beams these horrifying images into your brain of what will happen if androids get too advanced. And by 'horrifying images', I mean random shutterstock clips. No, that's not a joke:
These horrifying images drive most of the people who touch the beacon to suicide, and the rest are fanatically devoted to wiping out all artificial life forms.
For those of you who don't play a ton of video games, this is literally just the beacon from Mass Effect, a game in which an ancient alien beacon beams a series of broken images into your brain to warn you about a coming race of evil machine-organisms.
Anyways, it turns out that the message from the beacon says that there are a bunch of super-AI space squids lurking outside of our reality, and if sufficiently advanced AIs receive the message, they should build this beacon whose blueprints are included in the message, and call the space squids to kill all organic life in the... solar system? Galaxy? Universe? this is never explained. This is because the robo-squids have decided that organic life and artificial life has no chance of coexisting, and will always inevitably destroy each other.
Yes, again, that is literally just the plot of Mass Effect 3.
THEY STOLE THE PLOT FROM MASS EFFECT 3. THAT'S THE BIG REVEAL TO ALL THE SECRETS. EVERYTHING WAS MASS EFFECT 3 ALL ALONG. SPECIFICALLY, THE MASS EFFECT THAT EVERYBODY HATED THE ENDING TO BECAUSE IT WAS STUPID, AND THE WHOLE MOTIVATION FOR THE EVIL SPACE SQUID ROBOTS WAS STUPID. THEY STOLE THAT PART.
Anyways, so there's a secret planet of androids, which I think were all 'derived' from Data like Dahj. the Romulan double-illuminati is trying to track down the planet so they can kill all the androids. Picard, and Dahj's twin sister Soji, have to figure out how to get to the android planet and save them. And that's basically the plot of the show.
HERE IS A LIST OF SOME MORE STUPID THINGS THAT DON'T MAKE SENSE:
Remember that famous episode of TNG where Picard argues in court for the personhood of Data, on the grounds that if they are wrong, they risk creating a new slave race? Well, in Picard, the writers didn't watch that episode! So the Federation made a whole slave race of androids to work in the spaceship factories on Mars. They get hacked by the Romulans to blow up Mars to get the Federation to ban androids.
But the spaceship factories the robo-slaves are working in are building rescue ships to save Romulans. Why they would make the androids blow up ships that were set to save their planet is never explained.
Also also, the spaceship factories are run by, like, stereotypical blue-collar construction workers? I get the feeling that spaceship construction is pretty technical stuff, but they wanted to have, like, uneducated racist construction workers to be mean to the slave robots?
I don't even think that the writers of the show realize that they made a slave race of workers (probably 'cause they didn't watch the Star Trek episode where they talk about that).
There's a Romulan ninja who joins Picard. He's just a ninja. He says cool ninja things and cuts people's heads off.
The Romulan fleet is showing up to kill the androids, and the writers clearly couldn't figure out a way for Picard and his shitty little ship to defeat the Romulan fleet, so they fucking invent a magical-space-dildo-wand that can do anything, and it makes a giant holographic fleet appear. It looks so much like a sex toy that imgur rejected the original upload and I had to re-crop the image.
(https://i.imgur.com/onr5eR3l.jpg)
In the last episode, turns out Data is alive, and living in six USB sticks. He says hi to Picard, and then asks to die.
At the very end, Picard dies of a brain tumor, but then they put his consciousness into an identical robot body, which they say has been specifically programmed to simulate aging at a normal rate, and die in another 20 years. Bringing somebody back from the dead in a highly technologically advanced but basically identical body is also STOLEN FROM MASS EFFECT.
There is still so much more stuff. There's Picard's drug-addicted gun toting loner friend, there are the weird incest-sibling Romulan villains, there's the GORY EYEBALL REMOVAL TORTURE SCENE that starts episode 5.
I am gonna say, sometimes trashy stupid sci-fi TV that doesn't make a whole lot of sense is fun, but please do not give CBS any more money for shit like this. You just can't repackage your shitty Mass Effect fanfic as Star Trek and expect it to work.
EDIT: Also, I think I just had a realization why the hack writers decided to make the Romulans super racist against robots. In the JJ Abrams movie, Romulus gets destroyed, so now the Romulans are, like, nomad people. In spite of the fact that the Romulan Star Empire is fucking *huge* in Star Trek, and so presumably the Romulans have hundreds/thousands of other planets to live on, it reminded somebody of the Quarians from Mass Effect, and the Quarians are racist against robots because they accidentally created the Geth, a race of machines who kicked them off their planet and made them nomads.
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: lazzer grardaion? on December 10, 2020, 07:58:25 pm
Also, I just watched the episode where Beverly Crusher has sex with a ghost. That's a top five episode for me.
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: auaurorau on December 11, 2020, 06:16:20 am
I watched three episodes that were specifically recommended (S2E9, S3E21, S4E21) and they were all good. I also watched a non-recommended one (S3E2) and it was okay. I'm too lazy to sort my thought beyond that into a coherent post, but here's the unfiltered notes i wrote while watching the episodes (https://pastebin.com/GYemxxAj) if you're interested.
Thinking about the star treks as "american doctor who" helps, and now I understand star trek. I don't see why so many people are so rabidly into it, but different strokes and all that. It's decent entertainment. Data is good.
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: EYE OF ZA on December 11, 2020, 07:09:02 am
I think the Doctor Who comparison is also good for understanding why so many people were into it. It's not that it's so consistently good, but it's been so consistently present.
Star Trek has been coming out for a while. The original Star Trek was 1966-1969, with an animated series from 1972-1973 and then movies in 1979, 1982, 1984, and 1986. Movies kept coming out even after Star Trek went back to making shows, which were produced in a constant run from 1987, when The Next Generation began, all the way through Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and ending with the end of Enterprise (aka, the one no one talks about) in 2005. During that period, six more Star Trek movies came out, and there was another four-year dry spell before the Abrams Star Trek movies started up in 2009.
Star Trek has never had quite the same spectacle as Star Wars, but the one thing it has been is extremely, constantly present. Even when new TV episodes weren't coming out, reruns were still being aired. I was first really introduced to Star Trek by reruns of TNG in the early 00's even though that show had ended back in 1994. Every nerd who has grown up in the US the last fifty four years has probably watched Star Trek episodes growing up and has childhood memories associated with it.
So in that sense, it is a lot like Doctor Who--it's not that it's good, it's that it's utterly inescapable.
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: Shell Game on December 11, 2020, 09:36:49 am
I think it's more that people like different things at different levels. Which is fine. Everyone's fine.
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: lazzer grardaion? on December 11, 2020, 11:19:59 am
Here's my take:
I don't think that it's *all* nostalgia. It probably does play some role for me personally, but my girlfriend likes TNG about as much as I do, and she only first saw Star Trek when she was in college.
Furthermore, the series I watched the most growing up was probably Voyager, and let me tell you, going back and rewatching Voyager, I have no rose-tinted glasses. Voyager is not very good.
Rewatching TNG, I'm amazed at how many episodes stuck with me because they have a great premise, or a really strong character moment, or something else that is fun and memorable about them.
Unlike so much other sci-fi, there are tons and tons of episodes where nobody shoots a phaser at anything, and nothing blows up, and nobody does kung-fu. People talk through their problems, and try to work to a moral and peaceful solution to their issues. I think that alone makes it very novel in the modern sci-fi landscape.
The show doesn't really even have a villain. Heck, most episodes don't even have a villain. Star Trek TNG is largely a show about people acting in good faith to solve problems. When there is character conflict, it comes from the personal philosophies and life experiences of those characters, not contrived misunderstandings.
auaurorau, you mention that Data is a good boy? The secret to TNG is that they're all good boys.
Deep Space Nine is an excellent companion piece to TNG because it explores what kinds of problems a peaceful humanist society that has eliminated poverty, hunger, and definitely made inroads on general human prejudice and xenophobia would still encounter. It tackles a different set of problems, and often a much harder set of problems, but with the same skillful writing, and characters with a genuine commitment to seeking justice.
When people say they "love Star Trek", they usually mean they love TNG and DS9, and I will go to bat for those two shows any day of the week.
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: sambair on December 11, 2020, 12:29:07 pm
It's been a few years since I've watched it, but when Doctor Who is good, it's really good.
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: lazzer grardaion? on December 12, 2020, 02:07:53 pm
He had to shave off his beard for the role, and eat some gross shit, but he said he was okay with that as long as they let him get transported.
The only word he had to say was "Food!" over and over. However, he could not remember his line. They had to make a cue card for him and also apparently several people were behind the camera miming eating food? This sounds unbelievable, in fact, I basically don't believe it because it makes no sense. However, brent spiner said it in some obscure panel that I can't find on google, and levar burton was there and just nodded and laughed along, plus the guy who designed what the enterprise computer panels looked like independently made a twitter post about it years later:
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: Agent (gobble, gobble) Coop on January 06, 2021, 09:18:43 pm
Fucked up that half of the actors for Voyager's main male crew members were called "Robert"
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: Blandest on January 07, 2021, 03:49:05 am
Fucked up that half of the actors for Voyager's main male crew members were called "Robert" Agent (gobble, gobble) Coop, January 06, 2021, 09:18:43 pm
And they shoehorned in another Picard
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: auaurorau on January 11, 2021, 10:04:05 am
I've watched about twenty episodes of TNG now. It's weird that Picard and Riker are fairly omnipresent on the internet when they are the most boring characters in the show. Picard has done grumpy sternman for twenty episodes, and Riker's main job seems to be to punch someone every other episode, have a beard, and look smug.
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: Agent (gobble, gobble) Coop on January 26, 2021, 09:29:51 am
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: lazzer grardaion? on March 09, 2021, 02:33:38 pm
First, I can't let Coop do all the Star Trek shitposting in this thread.
Second, this thread is suffering from a distinct lack of Morn.
I only put two and two together this year that MORN is an anagram of NORM from Cheers, and plays a similar role as the perpetual barfly on Deep Space Nine.
There is a running joke, in that Morn never actually speaks on-screen, but people are always talking about him as if he's an incorrigible gossip who will talk your ear off.
They made an action figure of Morn
(https://i.imgur.com/JJ2pnvx.jpg)
Morn's actor, Mark Allen Shephard, is also a musician, who made an album 'Morn to be Wild'
(https://i.imgur.com/mM4PQMr.jpg)
MORN
(https://i.imgur.com/3Z6qIhk.jpg)
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: Agent (gobble, gobble) Coop on March 24, 2021, 10:53:57 am
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: Cheapskate on July 07, 2021, 09:49:12 pm
What could have caused the Federation to sign an unequal treaty that lets the Romulans and Klingons use cloaking devices but prohibits the Federation from doing so?
• An unseen war in which the Federation got spanked • Munich-style appeasement during a period of domestic political crisis in the UFP • Federation diplomatic corps riddled with Rommie sympathizers • Inter-service rivalry: Federation diplomatic corps, envious of Starfleet’s status, intentionally sandbag the fleet • Cloaking devices traded away for right to relocate sure-to-be-genocided conquered peoples • Planetary governments within the Federation object to cloaking devices lest Starfleet vessels conduct covert domestic surveillance programs • The term “cloaking device” in the treaty uses a definition that—unbeknownst to the Romulans—excludes the invisibility technology the Federation has been developing in secret • Starfleet adopted an area denial/fleet-in-being doctrine, in which having extremely visible warships is part of the strategy • Collaboration between political appointees and civil servants in the Federation negotiating team breaks down, leading to “Yes, Minister”-type farce
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: Blandest on July 08, 2021, 01:44:53 am
I just always took it that way the Romulans and Klingons had already developed their cloaking tech by the time the treaty was signed but the federation hadn't so all current tech was fine to use but the federation couldn't develop any more technology to cloak. The Defiant had a cloaking device installed by the Romulans for example and I don't think they kept a Romulan on board for very long to monitor it.
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: Sauce on September 04, 2021, 06:05:33 pm
I just learned that there's an Alexander Siddig fan club youtube channel that has a ton of videos that appear to be Siddig and various other DS9 cast members performing fanfics. I haven't had a chance to watch any in full yet, so not going to speak to quality, but the clips I've skimmed through seem like everyone involved is just having fun getting to play the characters again.
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: lazzer grardaion? on May 27, 2022, 06:10:07 pm
This is my effort to get out all my thoughts on Star Trek, after seeing the first episode of ‘Strange New Worlds’. Fair warning, I have a lot of thoughts about Star Trek. ——— Star Trek was important to me growing up. It was something that I both did and do share with my parents, who may remember how the tar monster from that one episode of TNG scared the bajeezus out of little me. I want to highlight how many episodes of Star Trek I saw when I was very young, but which I still remembered decades later, because they had some fun idea that stuck with me (e.g. the one where Data gets amnesia and stumbles into a civilization that still thinks the elements are earth-water-wind-fire, and they basically think he’s a yeti. Fun!)
During the pandemic, Patrick Stewart tweeted out a promo code for a month of Paramount Plus to promote their new ‘Picard’ show. I heard mixed things about Discovery, so I hadn’t bothered to watch that, but I was curious about how they were going to handle this!
The character of Captain Jean-Luc Picard on TNG is really compelling to me. He’s a deeply principled man, guided by a love of history and archaeology, and by curiosity. In a galaxy this big, how could he not be? Imagine our own history on planet Earth, with all of the mysteries, all the (presumably) lost artifacts, and in the universe of Star Trek, every week you might visit a different planet with its own history! The way that Picard appreciated the magnitude of that mystery, of that sense of discovery, made me appreciate it too.
Also, Picard is a bit of a square! He drinks tea and reads old books. He’s the captain of the ship, and he takes that responsibility very seriously. I like that he’s not a traditional action hero like Kirk, he’s just a different kind of guy. I have never personally hit a man with a double-handed axe chop, but I have sat in a chair with a book and had tea. Even TNG in its final episodes explored what Picard might be like decades in the future, and I was really curious about how they would take this character and move him off the Enterprise, and what kind of wacky sci-fi adventures he might get tangled up in. ——— So then I watched the new show about Picard.
Boy howdy it was just a bunch of nonsense crap. The show is a Matryoshka doll of mysteries inside mysteries inside mysteries, there are all kinds of brutal gory deaths in the middle, and then once you get to the final mystery it turns out to be stolen from a not-particularly-beloved video game plot. The show was helmed by the creative team of Alex Kurtzmann and Akiva Goldsman, who are buddies of noted hack JJ Abrams.
People continuously make impassioned speeches about nothing. Everybody’s having an emotional meltdown for some very contrived reason. One episode starts with a gory eyeball-removal torture sequence. It was a very disheartening experience.
Afterwards, I questioned my memory of TNG, and the character of Picard. Man, this new show was just *so incredibly bad*, could the old show still be any good? Was it just rose-tinted glasses?
Since then, my fiance and I have gone through about 11 seasons of Star Trek together (skipping much of seasons 1 and 2 of TNG, ‘Code of Honor’ is not part of my comfort-watch schedule).
Star Trek is fun! It’s got hokey characters and big sci-fi concepts, and it’s something different every time! There might be a space anomaly or a time warp! Or some kind of alien being that’s so different from us we don’t understand if it’s intelligent! A lot of the time there’s some moral dilemma that makes you think or feel something. Star Trek is full of uppercase-I Ideas.
Star Trek is about as good as I remembered! It isn’t good all of the time, but sometimes it’s just wonderful. Now, Picard was abysmal, and Discovery was another Kurtzmann/Goldsman product, so I was… reluctant to give it a try. Eventually, curiosity got the better of me.
Having watched the four (13-episode) seasons, I would say that Disco isn’t completely devoid of things I like, there are some character beats I found charming, most of the actors are doing their best with the material they’ve been given. Sometimes there’s a cool space whale or alien species. Tig Notaro’s there! Tilly is lots of fun! I don’t want to take apart Disco’s whole sweater, but I want to pull on a couple of threads, because they highlight my main point:
There are so many *potentially* interesting ideas, things that if you took the time to do even the tiniest exploration of them, you would have a real solid foundation for a Star Trek episode, and I think every single idea Disco brings up, they either drop or completely mishandle.
———
First, the character of Evil Philippa Georgiou: The concept of the ‘Mirror Universe’ in Star Trek is great for one-off episodes. It’s another universe where you have most of the same people and institutions, but they’re evil now! Everybody’s got an interdimensional evil twin, which gives all your actors a chance to ham it up. It’s fun, and it gives you an opportunity to explore Ideas about morality and the nature of good and evil! Of course, it’s a silly idea that falls apart under scrutiny, but it’s a great premise for a Star Trek episode.
Discovery made the decision to interrupt a season-long story arc about a war with the Klingons to do a four episode story arc about Discovery going to the Mirror Universe. I would go so far as to say that the two-parters DS9 did about the Mirror Universe were pushing it in terms of ‘falling apart under scrutiny’, so four episodes is pushing it past the breaking point.
The big revelation (because everything has to have a big *twwwwist*), is that protagonist Michael Burnham (played with aplomb by Sonequa Martin-Green) feels responsible for the death of her mentor/mother figure, Captain Georgiou, and it turns out that Georgiou has an evil twin in the Mirror Universe, who is the emperor of the brutal and racist Terran Empire (the evil version of the Federation).
Evil Georgiou is a genocidal tyrant. The first thing we see her do is blow up a planet. She has slaves whom she occasionally has killed, and then eats.
She is a cartoon supervillain, which wouldn’t itself be a bad thing, but then the show makes the utterly baffling decision to bring Evil Georgiou back to the ‘normal’ universe, and keep her around as a character, doing secret missions for Section 31 (basically the Federation CIA), rather than putting her in a jail for her unimaginable atrocities. This ties into another point, which is that I think Discovery is phenomenally cynical. Section 31 was introduced in Star Trek as a way of exploring how the Federation, nominally a bunch of peaceful secular humanists, handles groups who are not peaceful secular humanists. They are morally grey by design.
The way that Discovery’s version of the Federation takes a look at a lady who is basically Space Hitler, and goes “Ah, but she is so smart and such a tactical genius, that we must use her!”, it’s not necessarily unrealistic for a story set in the modern world, but Star Trek has, since Day 1, been about the idea that humanity can be better than the way it is right now, and it rubs me the wrong way that even a shady organization in a desperate time would turn to Space Hitler for help, and that the show would never ever try to seriously reckon with that. It’s one of many things that makes me wonder if the show’s writers even understand that what they’re writing is so cynical, or that they’re writing science fiction.
Saru (a ‘Kelpien’ played by the always-delightful Doug Jones) *knows* that Evil Georgiou has killed and eaten members of his species. Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands? She makes comments about how tasty the ganglia are when prepared by a specific chef, so we can assume she’s eaten enough Kelpiens to have a strong opinion! In one season 3 episode of Discovery, Saru invites Evil Georgiou to dinner. I can appreciate that Saru is a Starfleet officer, a professional trained in communicating with and understanding alien species, but inviting any person you could characterize as a cannibal, to dinner… and again, they never really explore this idea! Did the writers forget? Were they trying to make the audience forget? And then they make a horribly contrived callback to a beloved original Star Trek episode so that they can write Georgiou off the show, and so she can star in their new Section 31 spinoff show (thankfully trapped in development hell for the moment, as it should be).
You could take any one of these angles and expand them into a real solid Star Trek episode. Maybe Georgiou and Saru are trapped on a planet together, and they have to work together and learn to understand each other, and afterwards their relationship is different. Maybe after Georgiou goes to space jail forever they can be pen pals. I think that would be fun! Not even as a goof, I think that would be a solid Star Trek episode that can explore some big-I Ideas.
———
The next big dropped ball in Discovery’s writing is a literal ball: During the second season, they find a big ancient sphere that’s tens of thousands of years old, and it’s seen civilizations rise and fall, it has immeasurable knowledge of technology and culture, thoughts and arts and languages from all over the galaxy. It transmits all its knowledge to the Discovery, and then…
I want to point to a TNG episode with a similar premise, ‘The Inner Light’. A probe from an ancient, now-destroyed civilization transmits the memories of one of its members into Jean-Luc Picard, and he lives the life of ‘Kamin’, seeing the beauty and tragedy of life on this long-gone planet. For good reason, this is many people’s favorite episode of Star Trek; it ties into Star Trek’s central themes of exploration and seeking understanding, and how that search changes the seeker.
Discovery never does a single interesting thing with the Sphere Data.
It tells them some stuff about the population statistics of the Kelpiens from a few thousand years ago, which ties into a whole storyline with Saru which never really has anything to do with the Sphere Data itself. It apparently has extensive knowledge about artificial intelligence (which we never get to know *anything* about), and there’s an evil Skynet computer that wants that knowledge so it can take over the galaxy. It just makes the Sphere Data into a MacGuffin that the bad guy wants.
This ties into another point, that Discovery’s always going from a galaxy-ending crisis to a galaxy-ending (or universe ending, multiverse ending, whatever) crisis. You never get a chance to breathe, and maybe take the time to explore some capital-I Ideas. Sure it keeps the energy level high, there can be lots of action and drama, but you can never have an episode in there like ‘The Inner Light’.
Uh, the Sphere Data tells Evil Georgiou the planet she can go to so she can get written off the show. The Sphere Data apparently has a self-preservation instinct, so it doesn’t want the Discovery to be destroyed, but it sure forgets about that a lot until it’s convenient for the plot. As an aside, 1980 anime Space Runaway Ideon did this plot point with infinitely more skill.
Here’s my pitch for an episode! The Discovery needs to do something dangerous to save the day, and the Sphere Data stops them because it’s too dangerous, and the crew needs to communicate with this ancient alien AI to convince it that whatever they’re doing is more important than self-preservation. Low-hanging-fruit! That’s about it. Just a 565 km-wide dropped ball.
Title: Star Trek: The Next Space Nine From Boldly Go Original Series
Post by: lazzer grardaion? on May 27, 2022, 06:12:36 pm
Splitting into two posts because I hit the 20000 character count. lazzer grardaion?, May 27, 2022, 06:10:07 pm
In the third season, time travel shenanigans send the Discovery to the 32nd century, where a cataclysmic event called ‘the Burn’ made dilithium (the technobabble substance that makes the warp drive work) all over the galaxy (universe? multiverse?) stop ‘working’, and now warp travel is really hard, and the galaxy is in chaos.
The cause of the Burn is the big season-long mystery. Was it a secret Vulcan science experiment that they’re trying to cover up? Was it some ultra-powerful cosmic entity like ‘Q’?
The explanation they ultimately give is that a Kelpien child on a radioactive planet made out of dilithium somehow mutated to become ‘connected to’ the dilithium, and he got so scared and sad at seeing his mother die that he made a big psychic shockwave that burned out all the dilithium.
First, I want to say that this, by itself, would not be the hokiest sci-fi concept that Star Trek has ever done. There have been plenty of episodes about immature beings with immense powers, like S1E2 of original Star Trek! It’s been there since the beginning.
My first problem is that it’s not a satisfying resolution to a season-long mystery. It could be a good premise for a standalone episode, but “the heretofore unknown psychic child did it” is one step below “god/gods did it” and two steps below “the butler did it”.
Second, I wouldn’t complain so much if, in some way, it tied back into other themes or ideas, but Discovery isn’t interested in exploring themes or ideas. It’s interested in a big *twist*, and then there’s some okay character stuff with Saru, but the writers clearly have no interest in anything beyond that.
Here’s my minimal script doctor. Rather than the Burn being a complete mystery that nobody has an explanation for, it’s something that *everybody* has an explanation for. It’s an era of paranoia and finger-pointing. Everybody, even the nominally peaceful future Federation, is hankering for revenge and violence against whoever caused the Burn. Then, if the cause of the Burn turns out to be a child who can’t control their own powers, it forces everybody to confront their own desire to punish those ‘responsible’ for something that turns out to be an accident. That could be an Idea.
———
Maybe the biggest dropped ball is the first: the ship 'Discovery' has a ‘spore drive’ that lets it travel anywhere in the universe instantly. No warp drive, no weeks or months of travel, it can teleport anywhere.
The Discovery has the greatest ability to explore of any ship ever shown in Star Trek. They can go anywhere! They could end up in a part of the galaxy that’s never been explored before! They can really truly go where no one has gone before!
And then… they never really take advantage of that. There are the places they need to go to move the plot along, but they never just… explore.
There’s just not much of a ‘Trek’ in this Star Trek, and I think that’s a shame.
———
This lack of imagination, and absence of any overarching Ideas, means that sometimes, Discovery is just an absolute mess of a show.
S3E5 of Discovery starts off with the Discovery crew meeting the 32nd century Federation, and (as is so often the case in Star Trek), the admiral in charge is kind of a dick! He wants to split up the Discovery crew and put them on other assignments, and for a bit you think the episode is going to be about that.
Then it turns out that there’s a plague somewhere, and the Discovery is the only ship (due to its spore drive) that can get there in time to deliver medical supplies, and you think the episode is going to be about that.
But then it turns out that the cure for the plague is in some seeds on a seed-bank ship, and they have to go there, and there’s a weird guy who has his dead wife and daughter in stasis pods, and the guy keeps phasing in and out of reality because of a transporter accident during an ion storm, and it’s kinda about that for a while.
It’s just an absolute mess, and even though that’s one of the worse examples, you can pick episodes from each season of Disco that are just as much scrambled thoughtless nonsense, that manages to do or say nothing of substance in a 45-minute runtime. Sure, every season of every Star Trek series has a few clunkers, but even the bad Season 1 TNG episodes have An Idea or two in them, and the ideas guide the story, even if it’s hamfisted or sloppy or trite.
The ideas of Star Trek are its skeleton, and I think it’s quite a good skeleton to build on, in spite of the mixed results that various writers and directors have had over the years. Star Trek is a show about how human beings in the future might understand and respect each other, work together, and learn more about themselves by learning about those different from us.
Discovery and Picard have no interest in or connection to those ideas, and so you’re left with a sort of floppy blob-like sack of passionate speeches about nothing, quippy ‘smart’ dialogue, and some occasionally good special effects.
———
There are plenty of good actors in Disco, and a few good characters in there, too, but let’s take a quick detour in that direction.
Discovery has a lot of ‘bench-warmers’ in its core cast. Sure, in any Star Trek you have random crew members who are just sort of hanging out in the background, people who defend Discovery online like to bring up how Lieutenants Uhura and Sulu didn’t have first names in original Star Trek, *BUT* other Star Trek very rarely pretends like those crew members are real characters that we know anything about.
In Discovery’s Season 2 finale, Captain Pike gives a big emotional speech:
“Lieutenants Detmer and Owosekun, I wouldn't be here if you hadn't saved my life on the way to that asteroid. Lieutenant Nilsson, You've stepped up for Airiam in way that honors her. Lieutenants Bryce and Rhys, you're calm under pressure”
Lieutenant Detmer’s only notable characteristic is that she has a robot eye, and (after this speech happens) she gets PTSD after crashing the ship, and that gets handled mostly off-screen. Even in her tearful message (part of a montage) that she leaves behind for her friends and family before disappearing to the future, the only thing we see her talk about is how hard it was when she got injured and had to get a robot eye.
Lieutenant Owosekun’s Memory-Alpha page has a lot of “Owosekun was present at” in it. There’s one season 4 episode where she turns out to be a skilled pit fighter? But at the point Pike is giving this speech, I don’t even think we know her first name! People complain about Uhura being underdeveloped, and not having a first name, but Star Trek was also a show written and produced in the 1960s. A show written in the 2010s should aspire to being better than that; either it should develop the character enough that we understand and care about them, or it should cut out all the vapid inspirational speeches that would only have meaning if they had done that legwork beforehand.
Nilsson, Bryce, and Rhys are such nothing characters I can’t identify which is which by name.
Airiam is a robot lady. The writers didn’t know or care what kind of robot lady, some of the writers thought she was an alien, and she only got any kind of characterization or backstory the episode before she was killed off.
Expanding on the personalities of the background characters is a good thing. It provides texture to the show and its setting that makes it feel more real. TNG had a great episode ‘Lower Decks’ (the namesake of the new cartoon show), about cadets and ensigns and the guy who serves drinks at Ten-Forward, and what they do in their day-to-day life. Fleshing out those background characters can make the stakes of the show feel more real, but we can’t just be *told* to care about a character. When Red-Shirt Crewman Number 6 gets eaten by a lava monster at the start of the episode, it demonstrates that the situation is serious and dangerous, but you probably don’t know very much about them, and the rest of the episode probably won’t explore them in any serious depth. In the cases where it does (again, like in ‘Lower Decks’) that death is a focal point of the episode. It ties into the show’s themes and ideas about the responsibilities of command, or the danger of exploring the unknown, or *something*, *anything*.
Discovery likes to take the roles that would usually be random redshirts in any other Star Trek show, and gesture to these character-shaped-objects as if we know anything about or care about them. No shade to anybody who likes them, I enjoy character-shaped-objects in my shows as much as the next person (MORN FOREVER), but I do not think for a second that Deep Space 9 would work as a show if you replaced most of the main characters with Morns who do nothing but deliver expository technobabble, and you occasionally hear about something neat they did offscreen.
———
Recently, Kurtzmann/Goldsman started a ‘new show’, subtitled ‘Strange New Worlds’. Some of the trailers looked promising! It promised a return to episodic storytelling with self-contained episodes about a problem or dilemma or whatever that the characters have to solve. After Discovery and Picard, I treated it as a ‘fool me once, shame on you’ situation, but I resolved to give it one episode to sell me on it.
Now, the Disco Defenders may argue that one episode is not a fair metric to judge the quality of a ‘new show’. However, the creative team is still headed by the same people, you have returning characters Pike and Spock in your core cast, still played by the same actors as in Discovery, and following through with storylines that were set up in Discovery (namely, that Pike touched a crystal that showed him the future, so he knows his face is going to melt from delta radiation at some point, and being sad about that is his main character beat).
‘Strange New Worlds’ is basically Discovery Season 5, but I agreed to one episode.
The first episode starts with a long voiceover monologue that basically says “first contact with aliens is the realm of science fiction, until it isn’t”. Extended flowery monologues saying very little struck me as a bad sign.
Then, you have Pike watching ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’, specifically Klaatu’s monologue about how humans should take care of each other, and end war and exploitation. Very on-the-nose, also lazy to put a speech from a classic science fiction movie and act like you can just gesture to that rather than making a point yourself.
Imagining the art of the future is a difficult writing task, and one that Star Trek usually punts on, but this is… weak. (As an aside, it opens up the confusing question of what other classic science fiction exists in the world of Star Trek. If ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ exists, does the 2008 remake exist? What other sci-fi movies exist? So much genre fiction borrows from Star Trek in one way or another, does Star Trek necessarily exist in the world of Star Trek, or is there just this weird cultural gap?)
Then, true to its promise, the story has a problem that is introduced and resolved in the same episode. Pike is called to duty, in spite of his reluctance (because he is sad about knowing his face is going to melt at some point) to salvage a first-contact scenario gone wrong. Normally, the Federation only contacts civilizations after they’ve invented warp technology, out of a recognition that alien contact can be disastrous for a civilization that hasn’t yet advanced to that point. Developing warp technology is the ‘graduation’ of a species, that puts it on the same footing as the rest of the galactic community they are now joining. This policy is the Federation’s ‘Prime Directive’ that is the focal point of so many interesting Star Trek episodes.
It turns out that the species that they *thought* had developed a warp drive has actually developed a ‘warp bomb’, which is never explored or explained in any detail beyond the name.
Apparently they developed the warp bomb after seeing the big space battle at the end of Discovery Season 2, which is a bit like a group of uncontacted peoples developing a nuclear bomb after watching a naval battle between nuclear-powered ships.
To blend in on the planet’s surface, Pike, Spock, and Lieutenant La'an Noonien-Singh (extremely subtle) receive an injection that temporarily rewrites their DNA so they look like the aliens. This is a spin on an established Star Trek idea, that people will undergo plastic surgery to blend in with alien societies to discreetly study them, except that this is a disguise that can randomly wear off at inopportune times to create conflict and move the plot forward. On the alien planet that developed the warp bomb, there are people holding signs and protesting, and monitors everywhere displaying news of riots and violence. Spock goes “gosh, we seem to have landed on a planet in the midst of civil unrest”, because the writers think the audience is very very stupid.
Spock knocks out a couple of scientists and takes their scientist uniforms so they can sneak into the warp bomb facility, and then they transport the scientists up to the Enterprise, and try to keep them sedated, rather than leaving them in a field somewhere, or outside a bar, or anywhere, on the massive planet below them. Of course, the sedative wears off and there’s a scene of wacky hijinks where one of the scientists runs around the ship in a panic, until he gets stuck in an elevator with Uhura, where they talk about sports (???) until he gets off the elevator and nurse Chapel sticks him with more sedative.
Pike, Spock, and La’an sneak into the warp bomb facility, and of course the DNA-rewriting serum wears off at an inopportune time and they get captured.
As a captured alien, Pike gets an audience with the president of the planet, and he basically says “my planet, which was at one point exactly like your planet is now, did WWIII, and it was very bad, I recommend not building bombs and blowing each other up”. The president goes “we’re the ones in control on this planet, we have the most power, we make the rules”, and rather than try to debate that philosophy of power, or highlight what has happened to other civilizations and cultures that thought that way, Pike goes “well, I have the most power” and uses the Enterprise to force these aliens to get along with each other, and that’s pretty much the episode.
It spends so little time thinking about the alien planet, and their society, and how it got the way it is. We learn absolutely nothing about the dissidents who are opposing the existing government, or why, it just assumes that this alien planet is literally identical to 21st century United States society right now in every single way, so they don't need to explain anything, and then it has nothing substantial to say except "Don't do a civil war! WWIII is bad!” Honestly, even a bad Season 1 TNG episode has more to say about our world, and the different cultures, and philosophies, and ideologies in it, than this episode.
It has no ideas that it wants to explore, and it has no imagination about how alien cultures might develop. Pike’s character 'arc' in the episode is that he’s sad about his face melting, then he talks about WWIII being bad and how ‘life has possibilities’, and then he’s less sad about his face melting. It’s not an arc, it’s two points with a monologue in the middle.
That’s not even touching on La’an’s (god, how do you do a possessive “s” with that name?) awful backstory about being all her friends and family getting captured by the Gorn and being murdered and eaten and having their bodies cut open for Gorn ‘breeding sacks’ and her being the only survivor. UGH! AWFUL!
The show has no new ideas, no previously-unseen reserves of imagination, no skillful explorations of characters. It’s nothing! I gave it my one episode. I’m done. ——— By all means, if you found something in any of these shows, I’m happy for you, and I would love to hear about what you found interesting or inspiring or meaningful, but I don’t think modern Star Trek (at least the live action shows) hold anything for me any more.
The guys over at RedLetterMedia (whom I agree with on many, but certainly not all Trek-related topics) described the ‘Picard’ show as ‘being broken up with by Star Trek’, and as silly as that sounds, it does kind of describe my feelings. Star Trek was something very important to me, but Star Trek today has changed into something different, and I don’t think we have anything to offer each other anymore. Science fiction without Ideas is just flashy lights and technobabble, and that’s exactly what Kurtzmann and Goldsman are serving up.
There is still plenty of good high-concept sci-fi television out there. I would like to draw attention to ‘Raised By Wolves’ as a show that is just packed to the gills with Big Ideas about religion, parenthood, the unknown, life and death and creation and the universe and everything, and which thoughtfully weaves those ideas into stories that center around a richly realized cast of characters and their motivations. Also, shockingly enough, I loved the new 'Halo' series, which also explores themes of religion, parenthood, the morality of war, emotion and identity, and ties those themes into its characters and plot.
The words ‘Star Trek’ are just a brand name, but even though there is good thoughtful sci-fi out there, I’m sad and disappointed that Star Trek, which was my first exposure to so many of those big sci-fi ideas, is no longer interested in those ideas. I don’t think any child out there is going to have their mind blown by something they see in Discovery, Picard, or SNW. I don’t think there’s anything that will stick with them long-term (at least in a good way, it is entirely possible that there may be a child out there who will remember the scary tar monster).