Star Trek appreciation thread

[Andy Turnbull]

Wow, that's a wank title. Put the colon in and it makes sense.

Utter fannies.

Andy

[Fortmax2020]

Not: At All.

[Toph]

....wow. Even if you remove the "Star," it's still a bad title.

Seriously, just calling it Star Trek 2 (As opposed to the original Star Trek II) would have been better.

But then, what do I know. I still think The Dark Knight Rises (Should have been called Knightfall, and called it a day), and "Dark of the Moon" are bad titles.

[legios]

It isn't a very good title. It reads like a complete sentence, but a boring one. Like "Walking Trek into a tunnel". Not exactly a punchy exciting title to get peoples attention on your film.

Karl

[Jim]

I just learned from Zack Handlen's latest DS9 review that last Friday (28th) was the 25th anniversary of the launch of TNG! Surely worth lifting a drink to!

www.avclub.com/articles/defiantfascination,85924/

-Jim

[The Doctor]

I won't feel old until the 25th anniversary of the BBC2 broadcasts in 1990, which is when I first saw it. Lacking a VHS player, the Burns clan had to wait three long years to see it! That did task me somewhat.

-Ralph

[Jim]

I don't know when it was, but my first taste of TNG was the release of Encounter at Farpoint on rental VHS - it must have been pretty close to the release date because my dad reserved it in advance. I didn't think much of it, and didn't see another episode until season 2 started airing - saw a handful of episodes, then Q Who aired and I was hooked forever.

I look forward to the remastered versions being made available (legally) online.

-Jim

[The Doctor]

You'll have a very very long wait, I suspect. It will take until 2015 until all the episodes are out on Blu-Ray due to the extensive job being done to restore the series. Current home video market strategies would make it highly unlikely they appear in an online remastered format before the Blu-Ray releases finish.

As for the TNG S1 Blu-Ray, the US release was cocked up with wonky audio on 14 of the episodes. It has since been recalled, corrected and re-released. No idea about the UK release. I don't want to invest in an external Blu-Ray drive before I know that a proper release is in the market. I only want a drive for Blu-Rays to watch TNG.

-Ralph

[legios]

I am currently working my way through the final Season of Deep Space Nine - which is the one that my previous watching of is most patchy. There is some stuff I'm rather enjoying - whenever proper Klingons turn up you are pretty much guaranteed some entertaining scenes, Gul Dukat as Jim Jones was both completely unexpected and very good television and Sisko really is just turning into Hawk in space (stone cold killer who is also a sophisticated and sharply-dressed almost gentleman).

Although, I will say that the designated Nog episode, and the "genetically engineered people" episode does point out just how badly the Federation seems to be set up to deal with people with mental health issues. Really, given how enlightened we are always told the Federation is (and the sheer number of therapists their navy carries around with it) you would think they would be better at this!

Karl

[Jim]

Oct 8, 2012 15:31:30 GMT The Doctor said:

You'll have a very very long wait, I suspect. It will take until 2015 until all the episodes are out on Blu-Ray due to the extensive job being done to restore the series. Current home video market strategies would make it highly unlikely they appear in an online remastered format before the Blu-Ray releases finish.

I believe I read recently that someone sort-of-officially-not-on-the-record said they wouldn't be waiting for the whole series before going online as pretty much everything's going online these days, but yeah it will be a disappointingly long while even then.

I am not about to buy a Blu-ray player, or indeed a television to plug it into, but this would be about as close an incentive as I would ever get.

-Jim

[Jim]

Oct 8, 2012 21:30:35 GMT legios said:

I am currently working my way through the final Season of Deep Space Nine - which is the one that my previous watching of is most patchy. There is some stuff I'm rather enjoying - whenever proper Klingons turn up you are pretty much guaranteed some entertaining scenes, Gul Dukat as Jim Jones was both completely unexpected and very good television and Sisko really is just turning into Hawk in space (stone cold killer who is also a sophisticated and sharply-dressed almost gentleman).

Although, I will say that the designated Nog episode, and the "genetically engineered people" episode does point out just how badly the Federation seems to be set up to deal with people with mental health issues. Really, given how enlightened we are always told the Federation is (and the sheer number of therapists their navy carries around with it) you would think they would be better at this!

I very recently finished a 15-month run through of seasons 2 - 7 of DS9 - back in the day I only saw bits of the first season, the opening 4 episodes of the second and Trials and Tribble-ations.

Absolutely fell in love with the series, it has rocketed up my favourites. The characterisation is marvellous (O'Brien and Bashir is a very well realised friendship), the special effects took me by surprise - it really sells big-starship warfare, and the themes of the series were overall handled very well. I even got to like the theme music by the end, something I didn't care for when I first heard it.

As was often the case with TNG, the Klingon episodes were (mostly) great, and the Cardassian episodes shone as well, both often featuring great character actors. Lots of good recurring characters as well - Garak, Martok, Dukat, anyone played by Jeffrey Combs.

One thing really struck me was how unashamedly left-wing / anti-capitalist it could be. I liked this, though I know some people find it preachy at times. It's hard to imagine any mainstream show taking stances like this sometimes did in the current climate, without providing some alternative point of view for "balance". Which is sad.

I agree on the point re: how the Federation treats the genetically enhanced, et al though - that never quite sat right with me, to the point where I couldn't quite buy into that Bashir episode where it's revealed. I sort of hoped they would quietly forget it.

-Jim

[Bogatan]

Oct 8, 2012 15:31:30 GMT The Doctor said:

You'll have a very very long wait, I suspect. It will take until 2015 until all the episodes are out on Blu-Ray due to the extensive job being done to restore the series. Current home video market strategies would make it highly unlikely they appear in an online remastered format before the Blu-Ray releases finish.

As for the TNG S1 Blu-Ray, the US release was cocked up with wonky audio on 14 of the episodes. It has since been recalled, corrected and re-released. No idea about the UK release. I don't want to invest in an external Blu-Ray drive before I know that a proper release is in the market. I only want a drive for Blu-Rays to watch TNG.

-Ralph

Syfy Channel are advertising TNG in HD starting next month, presumably this will be the same version as is /will be available on bluray. I'll be glad if it is, but it also seems odd. If I'm honest CBS Action showing the updated TOS last year probably stopped me spending money on the bluray releases. And Syfy screenings are going to delay my purchase of the TNG blurays. I will get them as the extras sound very good, but I was ready to buy until I heard about the audio issues and decided to wait till I was sure to get the fixed version. Now that purchase is being delayed indefinitely.

[Fortmax2020]

Oct 9, 2012 13:31:16 GMT Jim said:

I agree on the point re: how the Federation treats the genetically enhanced, et al though - that never quite sat right with me, to the point where I couldn't quite buy into that Bashir episode where it's revealed. I sort of hoped they would quietly forget it.

-Jim

The Federation is never really portrayed as liking or even wanting to value the 'Other' very much. AI in TNG, VI in Voyager and humans who are 'different' in DS9. Its not even smug arrogance (although that is there too), but rather a primal revolution preventing them from considering things.

I've also always wondered about the dramatic differences between life on worlds like Earth (plush paradises) and the colony worlds where life is often about scratching a living from the dirt. In such a caring society how could they justify such inequality - it can't all be down to the 'pioneering' spirit given that they could ship better equipment to colony worlds.

Thinking about it as well individual Federation worlds/races were often portrayed with a degree of xenophobia to other races (including fellow Federation members). Humans included in this. How much of the Federation superior morality was just practical or pragmatic interstellar politics one has to wonder...

[legios]

The Bashir and O'Brien stuff is great - they really do seem like two blokes who get together down the pub for a pint after a shift. Jeffrey Coombs is indeed marvelous - and wonder of wonders, the final season gives us an episode with two Coombs who get to have an argument with each other over the space telephone. That was a moment of true joy.

I think one of the things that the Star Trek spin-offs suffer from is a slight tension between what the Federation is supposed to be and what it needs to be to create interesting television. On the one hand the Federation is supposed to be a post-scarcity utopia which can provide more than adequately for its citizens and is accepting and welcoming of all diversity. Unfortunately that is a bit of an "end-game" for television storytelling. There isn't a lot of ways to generate conflict between characters on any level from that point. So writers find themselves creating lots of "The Federation is pretty much perfect except...." clauses, which build up over time and you end up with a perspective on the society that is mostly comprised of the ways that it isn't perfect. (This isn't helped by the fact that we don't normally see mainstream Federation society - just it's uniformed services, outlying frontier regions or bits of it that are currently or recently being shot at).

The logical result of the Federation being a post-scarcity society would probably resemble something the Ian Banks' Culture rather than what we actually get on screen in Star Trek.

That said, Deep Space Nine does sometimes give the unfortunate, and I suspect unintentional, impression that civilian government of the Federation is very much a subordinate wing of Starfleet. The uniformed services do seem to have a role in setting overall policy that would probably worry most modern democratic thinkers I suspect...

Karl

[Fortmax2020]

I have no idea what you mean.

*attempts political coup at the first whiff of a shape shifter*

[Toph]

I wish some station here would start airing DS9. All we get are the same handful of TNG episodes on BBCA, and every once in a while Syfy runs an all day marathon of TNG with a slightly better variety.

DS9 was pretty boring to me until around the time they got the Defiant. Most people associate that as when DS9 got good, and attribute that solely to Worf joining the cast. But I dissagree with that (If anything, I think Worf brought it down a little. Much prefer TNG Worf over DS9 Worf).
Star Trek has an odd issue... Any series... seasons 1 and 2 will always suck. Starting with Season 3 it's really starting to pull itself together, and is usually really good by the end of 3.
I attribute this to two reasons... the actors have become familier with their characters, as well as each other, and know how to work with each other and play off one another, as well as the writers also have a good grasp of who the characters are.
Around the time they got the defiant, is when the cast of DS9 *really* started to gel together.
I remember a really great episode that the defiant took heavy damage, and Sisko was hurt really bad. He and Kira were separated and alone together on the bridge, and you could just feel how much Kira really had come to care about him, in a realistic way.

TNG FTW, but DS9 is a very close second.

Yoyager makes me sad, because it had so much potential, yet it suffered from idiotic decision making so badly. And most of it comes down to that stupid reset button that gets pressed at the end of every episode.
If there was ever a series that needed to have a continuing narrative, and lose the "preserved statis quo" that was it. Just about any time a character got any meaningful developement, it got returned to normal, and no one ever spoke of it again.
Tuvok for examle. There was one episode where he got injured and not only lost his memory, but his mine got regressed to a child-like state. Tim Russ got a chance to really act, and really did some endearing things. We got to see what a great character Tuvok really was. And this would have made for an excellent continuing story for him, through the course of the season, if not the entire series. But at the end of the episode, they hit the reset, and never spoke of it again.
Another episode, everything started out horrible, through the course of the episode, Voyager and crew are destroyed, and Ensign Kim and the little girl are the only survivors, and the only reason they survive is they jumop ship to an alternate reality voyager where those two are the only ones lost. Would have been really interesting to see how this played out long term psychologically. But, reset and never spoken of again.
Then, there's Voyager herself. That ship by season 7 really should be quite different from seaosn one. Full of cobbled together enhancements, alien tech, and all sorts of things. Especially the enhancements the borg gave them when they were having to fight those interdimensional aliens.
Voyager had great actors, and decent characetrs full of potential. Unfortunately, the only ones to get any true perminant developement were Nelix, the Doctor, and Seven (and Seven wasn't a character I particularly cared about)
Oh well. At leats it got better once they got passed the Kazon. I hated them. Wonky design, and extremely uninterestoing alien race.

I would like to see a series someday that is not set in Starfleet, though. Or where Starfleet makes up only a small element.
Would also be cool to see another jump 100 years further into the future. Most of the galaxy now runs on the same page, and they develop a way to open wormholes at will. The major "empires" group together and send a joint one year expedition into the andromeda galaxy. Starfleet, the Romulans, and another race or two sending a small joint fleet of four or five ships on a one way trip of diplomacy and exploration. (One year later the wormhole is reopened so they can come back)
Hell, maybe even the Borg could be involved, having evolved into something more positive.

[Bogatan]

I think it was about the time 7of9 arrived that I just gave up because of the reset button. As Jetty said at the end of her arrival Voyagers exterior was half borg, but next episode (or did they give it an episode or two) it was back to normal. All I could think was:
1. Hadn't the borg modifications actually been beneficial?
2. Unless they were actively damaging was it worth the effort and supplies of not only removing them, but perfectly repairing the areas too.

I wouldnt have wanted it to go full BSG or SGU, but starting every episode as though they had just spent a week at the nearest starbase bugged me beyond belief.

[The Doctor]

Ron Moore worked on Voyager for around 6 weeks at the start of production on season 6 of Voyager after DS9 finished its run. He very much wanted to make the show about limited resources, how the crew coped so far from home space, adapting the ship, etc. He had some creative differences over these ideas and jumped ship from Trek. Much of his ideas were later used on Battlestar Galactica.

-Ralph

[Toph]

Oct 10, 2012 12:01:47 GMT Bogatan said:

I think it was about the time 7of9 arrived that I just gave up because of the reset button. As Jetty said at the end of her arrival Voyagers exterior was half borg, but next episode (or did they give it an episode or two) it was back to normal. All I could think was:
1. Hadn't the borg modifications actually been beneficial?
2. Unless they were actively damaging was it worth the effort and supplies of not only removing them, but perfectly repairing the areas too.

I wouldnt have wanted it to go full BSG or SGU, but starting every episode as though they had just spent a week at the nearest starbase bugged me beyond belief.

Aye. I wouldn't have wanted Battlestargate, either, but it's increadibly easy to make each episode stand alone, while still keeping the continuing continuity between them. Enterprise was the weakest trek series and it did that really well.
TF Animated did it. TF Prime has gotten better about it. Young Justice does this. Hell, even MLP: FiM does it to a degree.

And no, there was no period shown between when Voyager was borg enhanced, to when she wasn't.
Sadly, it's not unique, either. There were many episodes Voyager took heavy damage, and all was well again by the next episode, as though it never happened.
Let's not forget the endless supply of shuttlecraft she was equipped with (Though at least they did sorta address that.
A ship her size should have had maybe four shuttles, but she went through I bet two dozen.
It really should have been a show about limited and dwindling resources, like you said.
But instead, it showed us exactly why Brennan Bragga should not be allowed to write.

[The Doctor]

I don't think Voyager was a bad show as such, but it's style of 'story of the week/reset button' was outdated by the time it launched, both in terms of other Star Trek shows and US TV storytelling styles in general. So by the time it ended it was positively a dinosaur on the landscape of popular drama. Had it launched 5 or 10 years earlier it probably would not have stood out like such a sore thumb.

Let's not forget that much of TNG was made up of 'story of the week/reset button' plots where the plot would be resolved and the next episode would start with everything ok again with the series sliding towards continuing storylines interspersed with standalones as it went on (which was what Voyager did with the exception of season 4 which actually does hold up as a continuing storyline). The difference is that TNG launched in 1987 (when 'stories of the week' were standard for continuing longform US-TV drama shows) and Voyager launched in 1995 (when arc-based storytelling was coming into common use in US-TV).

Now I am not talking here about the quality of storytelling in Voyager, but more commenting on the structure of its episodes.

-Ralph

[blueshift]

Well, the setup of Voyager itself was completely the opposite to 'self contained stories'.

Voyager was a ship lost in hostile territory where half the crew are Federation, and the other half are the terrorists they were supposed to be hunting down, having to work together to survive.

But uh, they pretty much forget about this after the pilot. Ho ho ho everyone is happy and best friends! Bizarre!

[The Doctor]

Oct 11, 2012 19:39:19 GMT blueshift said:

Well, the setup of Voyager itself was completely the opposite to 'self contained stories'.

Indeed! And then the series itself was mostly 'self-contained stories', which was strange given the premise!

-Ralph

[legios]

It is worth remembering that Voyager launched into the world that had evolved from the "First Run Syndication" model that Star Trek: The Next Generation had pioneered, and was created on that model because that was what people who were developing it knew.

In that era television series were created with an eye to marketing them as "here are X hours of television for your station/network for Y dollars" do with it as you please. The idea was to create something marketable that the purchaser could use as he saw fit - run whatever episodes in whatever order, timeslot and at whatever pace he chose. This was different to the model of the old networks where someone in an office on the East Coast decided what would be on that channel at a given time across the entire United States. When you have people chopping up your show in whatever way they want a lack of continuity from episode to episode is a virtue rather than a vice, because it enable them to flip an episode around in the order or not show it because they want to do something local instead in that slot without really harming the audience figures in the longer term.

Voyager had the mis-fortune to come into being during the transition away from that model and the beginning of the "Water-cooler moment" era of television - where the whole idea is to get the entire state talking about your series at the same time. so you want anything that locks people into a pattern of coming back en masse - regular timeslots, tight inter-episode continuity, continuing story threads.

Voyager had the misfortune to be a large reptile in an era where the environment favoured small mammals, if you will. They didn't make Voyager the way that I would have made it, but I can see the reason why they chose to make it the way that they did.


Karl

[Bogatan]

I occasionally wondered if Voyager as we got it had been released in 86 in place of TNG how would it be viewed? would it have match the popularity and resulted in a series of spin offs?

Early on they are probably quite even, but when TNG kicked on around season three, voyager didn't for me. Even if Voyager had been renamed Enterprise and the series called TNG I cant imagine it would have been as successful.

For one thing I think TNG had a better sense of continuity than Voyager despite a format/premise that needed it less.

[Toph]

Again, I find myself agreeing with Bogie.

I do think it's fair to compair Voyager to TNG. They're so simular in so many ways, after all.
Simular number of seasons. They both had good to amazing characters. Simular format.

But there was something TNG had from the gate, that Voyager didn't. Gene Roddenberry.
I'm not going to fall into the trekkie trope of hailing and praising Roddenberry as some kind of flawless amazing visionary.
But he set up TNG, and made sure it was on it's path, and it stayed that course well after he died. Voyager didn't have that.
Between TNG, DS9, and Voyager, there were a lot of backstage politics going on, and a lot changed once Burman took over. And this effected Voyager more severely than it did DS9. DS9 was created by Rick Burman, Jeri Taylor, and Michael Piller. And I believe Voyager was, too. These three were hand picked by Roddenberry himself, and Piller and Taylor are generally credited for what made TNG stand out so well. And DS9 also. However, Brennan Bragga became Burmans little buddy and toady, and more and more was given to him. Taylor, the few times she talks about it, says they made it a very hostile place, and they eventually ran her off, very soon after Voyager started, and gave it to Bragga.
I'm honestly not sure what happened to Piller.
Bragga also had a heavy hand in TNG season 7, which is considered one of, if not the weakest season.

Personally, I think Voyager was stronger at it's start than TNG was, as the first season of TNG was obcessed with trying to copy the original trek.

As for set up... TNG was designed for the episodic formula, and it's whole situation could handle it well. They were in the middle of the federation, and any severe damage could be delt with between eps. Crew members could come and go with relative ease, and there was no reason to question why we didn't see Barclay, or Ro for a full season.
And while all that worked in TNG's favor, it did have a better sense of continuity, as Bogie pointed out. There were always running threads that we could see. When something life changing happened to a character, it usually stuck. Picard from "The Inner Light" is a brilliant example of that. When he experienced that probe, it changed him forever. His fear and obcession with the borg, after being assimilated, did too.
Worf and Alexander, Worf's relationship with Troi (Which I LOVED. So much better than Worf/Dax, or Troi/Riker). Data had many opportunities for growth that effected him perminantly. Even the supporting crew that only had a handful of appearanced, like Ro and Barklay had a lot of developement.
TNG did hit the reset button a lot. But almost only on the ship, and equipment. Very rarely on the characters.
If Voyager had been done in place f TNG, I don't think it'd be doom and gloom for star trek, but I don't think it would have made Trek into the powerhouse juggernaut that TNG did.

Voyager needed to follow TNG's footsteps, and take it to the next level.
Like I said, there's no reason Voyager couldn't do episodic stories without hitting the reset button. SG1 did episodic without gratuitus use of the reset button all the time, and they did it well. If Janeway was determined to take off the borg enhancements (Which was a stupid idea), there's no reason that couldn't have taken place through four or five episodes, while whatever adventure of the week they went through happens.

That said, Voyager holds up pretty well. Unsure if this is due to, or dispite the reset. It plays through better now, than it did first run. Maybe that has something to do with what Legios points out.

[Philip Ayres]

Oct 12, 2012 0:04:19 GMT Toph said:

Bragga also had a heavy hand in TNG season 7, which is considered one of, if not the weakest season.

I love huge chunks of 7. Certainly much more of it than 4 or 5.

But we all know that it's S3 that really rocks.

[Shockprowl]

Oct 10, 2012 12:01:47 GMT Bogatan said:

I think it was about the time 7of9 arrived that I just gave up because of the reset button. As Jetty said at the end of her arrival Voyagers exterior was half borg, but next episode (or did they give it an episode or two) it was back to normal. All I could think was:
1. Hadn't the borg modifications actually been beneficial?
2. Unless they were actively damaging was it worth the effort and supplies of not only removing them, but perfectly repairing the areas too.

I wouldnt have wanted it to go full BSG or SGU, but starting every episode as though they had just spent a week at the nearest starbase bugged me beyond belief.

I haven't thought about Star Trek Voyager for years! And the above is probadily why! I agree entirely, I lost interest very early on because the excellent premise of a Federation ship lost in space just didn't happen. I feel it was a wasted oportunity.

There's alot to be said for that extra sparkle Roddenbery gave a show.

[The Doctor]

People forget that Roddenberry was effectively shoved upstairs by the end of S1 of TNG. He still provided ideas but Berman was running the show.

-Ralph

[Toph]

Oct 12, 2012 7:02:26 GMT Philip Ayres said:

Oct 12, 2012 0:04:19 GMT Toph said:

Bragga also had a heavy hand in TNG season 7, which is considered one of, if not the weakest season.

I love huge chunks of 7. Certainly much more of it than 4 or 5.

But we all know that it's S3 that really rocks.

Season three had, IMO, the second best season ending cliffhanger in television history. Best of Both Worlds rocked hard, and is the best Star Trek has ever been.
Although, it's come close.

(If anyone wonders, I rank Beast Wars Season 2's finale as the best. Doctor Who's "The Pandorica Opens" would be the new number one, if that had been the end of that season, leaving Big Bang 2 to be the opener for the next)

[The Doctor]

Interview with the folk working on the TNG Blu-Rays:

tng.trekcore.com/bluray/cbsdigital_interview1.html

-Ralph