lastplayed
Member
It was so awesome seeing the star of one my favourite childhood movies in one of my favourite TV shows.
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The General Star Trek Thread of Earl Grey Tea, Baseball, and KHHHAAAANNNN
- Thread starter The Librarian
- Start date
It was so awesome seeing the star of one my favourite childhood movies in one of my favourite TV shows.
Henchmen21
Banned
Than your heart sinks seeing him as bald as a pluck chicken.
I think Sisko's actions in attacking a colony were extremely immoral and should absolutely be illegal, but it should be recognized that (while colony-destroying) they were apparently non-lethal. Eddington was shooting down escape shuttles. Sisko's "bad guy" act wasn't nearly as bad as what was going on at the time.
If Sisko hadn't attacked a random innocent colony, it was a certainty that Eddington would have attacked a different innocent colony. And another, and another, and another. Sisko dirtied his hands in order to trade one random victim for another random victim, messing up Eddington's tidy little ethnic cleansing program, and stopping the flow of victims.
Starfleet let it slide because apparently they felt the ends justified the means, and because there were no fatalities on either side, thanks in no small part to Sisko's rescue efforts. Remember, Sisko could have stopped Eddington even earlier if he had allowed all of those Cardassians on the escape transport to die. This was a mess that could be solved by running a few diplomats out to negotiate a straightforward 1-for-1 planet exchange. This was nothing compared to the mess that other Starfleet officers (like Eddington himself) were getting Starfleet into at the time. Can you imagine what would happen if Cardassia had stepped in to solve the problem instead of Sisko?
Chakotay and Torres can imagine it now, idiots. What did they think would happen?
And one of the themes of DS9 was that many of the moral situations faced by the likes of Picard in the comfort of the heart of the Federation were easier than ones faced by people like Sisko in the bad neighborhoods, where no-win scenarios were more common. And now that I think of it, Sisko's "cowboy diplomacy" solution was more the kind of solution that Captain Kirk (master of the no-win scenario) would have come up with.
I think they were shocked by the orders, but they knew that this was Sisko they were dealing with, there had to be more to what was going on than the insane ravings of a madman, and the situation was so immediate that they didn't have time to question orders, otherwise any one of them could have ruined whatever plan Sisko had going on.
Gary Whitta
Member
This week I learned that the actor who plays Dexter Remmick (the Starfleet officer who wants to disassemble Data in "The Measure of a Man") is also a Pulitzer Prize-winning author!
Lumpy Onion
Member
Pretty sure that was Dr. Bruce Maddox who wanted to disassemble Data. Dexter Remmick was that creepy guy in "Conspiracy" and an earlier episode.
DrForester
Kills Photobucket
Yeah, Remmick was the guy from Conspiracy. The guy who's head gets blown up.
Jake Tower
Banned
Right, he was the asshole Lt. Commander doing the inquisition on everyone.
What pisses me off is that DS9 introduced so many good threads and then the final episodes kind of shat on them.
Like how the Section 31 guys act like idiots to move the plot forward in "Extreme Measures".
StalkerUKCG
Banned
Section 31 is so different from traditional star trek I always thought they could have their own series.
Section 31, set it just after the TNG/VOY era have them in a single ship with a small tight knit crew and have lots of them scheming, infiltrating, messing with time and just being general space dicks.
Looking on this page: http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Section_31
It looks like Section 31 was retro-fitted into a lot of Trek storylines by novels. Some of it makes since.
It looks like Section 31 was retro-fitted into a lot of Trek storylines by novels. Some of it makes since.
Felix Lighter
Member
Season 7 of DS9 could do with a lot less
Vic Fontaine. Also, it seems pretty insane what that hologram is able to do with impunity.
I always thought that was an interesting character, but some of what they did with him was cheesy. I tended to enjoy the occasional holodeck glitch episodes that were in TNG and up.
Gary Whitta
Member
Oh right yeah, got my creepy Starfleet officers confused for a minute there.
KRULL!
Watched that for the first time when I was in Barbados last on a crappy, grainy TV channel. Didn't it cost a tonne to make and flopped massively?
I think we got a censored version though, as it would cut out every time one of the bad guys would get killed.
Mr. Luchador
Member
Star Trek: Game of Galactic Thrones
Ugh.
I think that for me (and evidently a lot of other people) if you don't have likeable characters, I'm not going to get anywhere in the series. I lost Breaking Bad after they had Walter get an easy way out in like the third episode but they specifically write him like no halfway intelligent person on the planet has ever acted or will act. Even Mad Men, which I've gotten through three seasons of, I've lost the inertia because the dickishness of everyone involved has started overpowering the quality of the writing.
I'm all for having imperfect characters, but making them all unlikeable means I simply won't watch.
Case in point: Garak and Dukat are alternatively slimy, heroic characters. They're pretty horrible insofar as people go, but they're engaging foils for the other characters and aren't treated as cardboard....
at least until the Fire Caves bullshit
Henchmen21
Banned
That's the problem with modern TV. You can't have likeable, positive characters anymore.
Just finished S1 of TNG. I liked it - it wasn't perfect or even great but there was some enjoyable stuff here and there (but also a lot of truly awful episodes). I was glad that towards the end of the season Geordi and Worf finally got some more screen time where they each had an episode with a plot centered around them. I never really cared for Tasha but man she
. Conspiracy was probably the best episode here, especially because of the unexpected
at the end. Not really much else to say here, but on to season 2!
deserved a better death than whatever the hell that was
head explosion
I was surprised at how graphic the death is in Conspiracy when I first watched it, even though I first saw it a long time after it originally aired and the special effects were pretty dated. It must have been fairly extreme for TV in the 80's I would have thought.
Season 5 of DS9 is still really strong overall. Ferengi Love Songs was certainly trying my patience, and Children of Time might be the worst time travel episode of the lot I think. I get what they were going for but it was so poorly executed.
Is Star Trek unique in having so many of its episodes directed by both former and current actors? I have noticed over the course of watching DS9 there are a bunch of episodes directed by Jonathan Frakes, LeVar Burton, Avery Brooks, Rene Auberjonois, and Andrew J. Robinson.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
A lot of the actors used it as director's school, basically. Makes sense, especially if you want the union card.
Of course, as mentioned a while ago, Garrett Wang basically got black balled from directing because he spoke out against the show way back when.
SpoonyBard
Banned
Looks like his career flatlined after the series ended. Now he's acting in fan projects...
firehawk12
Subete no aware
Well, like most of the Trek actors, really. At least scifi actors have the benefit of living off of the convention circuit though!
TOS had a major problem in that a lot of the actors ended up being heavily typecast. It's bad for your career when you can be as amazing an actor as Leonard Nimoy, but people still say "Hey look, it's Mr Spock!"
The show had to make sure that this sort of thing didn't happen again, otherwise nobody would ever want to work for them, so they came up with the idea of making sure that working for Star Trek offered other opportunities for career advancement.
lastplayed
Member
Sounds like you're just behind me. I'm just over half-way through S2 and it's been pretty entertaining. Even the bad ones can be fun.
I forgot how good Time Squared is.
The future Picard is so creepy, Stewart really pulled something out of the bag for that one.
To be fair, that typecasting also probably pulled people like Koenig and Takei out of otherwise-certain oblivion.
In terms of successes after Trek, Robert Duncan McNeil seems to have a pretty long resume of directing credits, including what seemed like half of "Chuck"'s episodes.
Finished up DS9 season 5 last night, feels like half the cast just disappeared for a few episodes towards the end, but they were interesting to watch all the same. Blaze of Glory did a good job of making Eddington, Sisko, and the Maquis more understandable in their positions. Sisko still came across as a jerk for most of the episode though I felt. Very dark in tone with the discovery of all the dead Maquis on arrival at the hideout.
Which lead well into Empok Nor, which conitinued the dark tone and might have been my favourite episode of the season. Garak continues to be great, so it is a little disappointing to see some posts saying that they kind of ruin his character by the end of the show. I can't think of another episode I have seen yet in DS9 or TNG that played like a thriller/suspense movie the way this episode did.
It was kind of strange seeing Nog walking around with the rifle, I guess his demeanour and stature make him seem younger than he really is. I have come around on Nog and Jake episodes, with both characters being more tolerable as the show has gone on. I still feel you could probably write Jake out of the show without losing at great deal though.
Looking forward to seeing where things go now that the Cardassians have taken over DS9.
Which lead well into Empok Nor, which conitinued the dark tone and might have been my favourite episode of the season. Garak continues to be great, so it is a little disappointing to see some posts saying that they kind of ruin his character by the end of the show. I can't think of another episode I have seen yet in DS9 or TNG that played like a thriller/suspense movie the way this episode did.
It was kind of strange seeing Nog walking around with the rifle, I guess his demeanour and stature make him seem younger than he really is. I have come around on Nog and Jake episodes, with both characters being more tolerable as the show has gone on. I still feel you could probably write Jake out of the show without losing at great deal though.
Looking forward to seeing where things go now that the Cardassians have taken over DS9.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
Oh wow, I had no idea that GNP released a Best of Both Worlds soundtrack. It must coincide with the release of the 'movie'. Either way, it's kind of amazing to hear these tracks just by themselves.
The Librarian
Banned
For some reason I thought "Blaze of Glory" had been in S6 and I was really, really confusing myself.
Henchmen21
Banned
Nope. They've had one out for like 20 years now. I know. I have it. It's missing a few small cues though. The Ron Jones Project had the missing cues. They couldn't put the full thing out though due to GNP still holding the rights.
edit: Never mind. Just saw what you were talking about. Yup. Looks like a new extended release.
lastplayed
Member
I know this is probably old news, but this TNG wardrobe test footage is pretty amazing. It's hard to imagine what a huge unknown that series was back then, whether it was going to succeed or fail miserably.
I think that wardrobe test footage was on the blu-ray release of TNG, it really is quite creepy to watch. I have to imagine most people thought it was going to fail at the time, the first season was pretty rough around the edges.
Is there any general consensus on which of the Star Trek movies are worth watching? The blu-ray versions of them are on sale for $10 each so I was thinking of grabbing some of them. Do I need to have seen TOS to watch the earlier movies, or do they all work on their own?
Is there any general consensus on which of the Star Trek movies are worth watching? The blu-ray versions of them are on sale for $10 each so I was thinking of grabbing some of them. Do I need to have seen TOS to watch the earlier movies, or do they all work on their own?
firehawk12
Subete no aware
Yeah, it's a new extended release. I have no idea if it's different from the original release from 20+ years ago though.
I wonder if you can really get shows like TNG. Star Trek has a pretty long history of taking a season or two to get its footing, and it seems like second chances (like second pilots) and getting three seasons to work out kinks is an impossible luxury now. On the other hand, cable means that shows can succeed with smaller audiences, but I dunno how I'd feel about Star Trek on a channel I wouldn't have access to.
Star Trek on NBC. Would outperform most of their other shows anyhow.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
GameplayWhore
Member
I would suggest 2, 3*, 4, 6, 8, 11, 12. The films stand on their own and are quite different in style from the television series. You can track down the episode "Space Seed" if you want some background information on 2
and 12
* 3 is rough and doesn't quite get the job done, but when it's good it's great, and it fills some necessary gaps in the middle of what is essentially a trilogy. edit: also the bad guy is Doc Brown.
I think the movies just need a general awareness of TOS in order to jump in. Captain Kirk, Spock is a pointy-eared Martian, the Starfleet Enterprise... you're good to go.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture is kind of slow and weird. You might like it, you might not. You could skip it without worry.
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is the fan-favorite near-perfect Star Trek movie that all other Star Trek movies try (and fail) to be. Any attempt to watch Star Trek movies must start here, if you didn't already start with TOS or TMP.
Star Trek III continues where ST2 left of, but isn't quite as good.
Star Trek IV continues where ST2&3 left off, but this time it's a comedic 1980's social commentary.
Star Trek V is Kirk vs God, directed by William Shatner. Like TMP, you could skip it if you really wanted.
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country is a solidly good Star Trek movie.
Star Trek 2 and 6 are the best ones, but 3 and 4 are kind of required viewing before going into 6 if you don't want major spoilers. So get 2, 3, 4, and 6. If you feel adventurous, you might want to get 1 and 5 as well, just for the heck of it, to complete your set and your Star Trek movie experience.
GameplayWhore
Member
Just to separate the very different reasons for why they might not be worth watching:
1 is *plodding*. The story is decent, and if you got your hands on a fan-edit that reduced its size to, say, 80 minutes or less, then it'd probably be no worse than passably solid with a respectable attempt at being bigger than just your typical Cowboys vs Indians explosionfest.
5 is *garbage*. It is impossible to re-cut it so as to be a good story without excising the story itself.
Henchmen21
Banned
It is. Looks like it includes the stuff from The Ron Jones Project to make it a complete score.
That's because back then there were only three channels.
Wrong. Fox had started in 86/87ish. Cable was also around back then just not that many people had it.
Says the guy who includes the Abrahms movies as Trek to watch. I'd rather watches 5 24hrs straight than either JJ movies. It's also telling that 5 is still not as stupid as both JJ movies.
The Librarian
Banned
Don't watch ST11 or ST12.
Yeah.... no.
100% agree. ST09 and STiD are good fun films. Nothing cerebral but it's not as if that was to be expected.
GungHo
Single-handedly caused Exxon-Mobil to sue FOX, start World War 3
I think it's absurd to even suggest that ST5 is more cerebral than 09 or, especially, ID. ID actually dealt with social issues, whether you like how it dealt with them or not. ST5 was just an opportunity to stroke Shatner's ego.
The Librarian
Banned
Eh. I don't know how anyone can argue that STiD dealt with social issues well.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
We're talking about the 60s though, aren't we?
During original Star Trek's time, 16 million viewers or whatever they got WAS probably considered a "bomb" because of the number of channels that people actually had to choose from.
Henchmen21
Banned
Maybe. Not sure since I reread the post you quoted. Fuchsdh was talking about Star Trek as a whole I think.