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Ethics. Another vague title that you could have applied to any number of episodes and another one I saw you lot talking about here and thought "oh, I don't like the sound of that". Yes, Worf gets twatted by a barrel and we end up with 45 minutes of maudlin, soapy medical melodrama. See, I was prepared to give Violations some credit, it leaps full swandive into pretty dicey subject matter and misses the pool entirely, but it DOES try. This is just loving lazy and boring. The drama isn't there, we know he's going to be on his feet and skipping lightly through the decks of the Enterprise like a giant oafish pixie come the end credits, thanks to Dr. Kate-McKinnon-As-Hillary-Clinton and her super turbo spine rip technique. Zero excitement in that operation sequence and the death fake out, incidentally. Why bother? The Outcast. What's this? Oh no! Can it be? Has Star Trek gone woke? Pronouns? EEW. That's what would I'd say if I was a tactless moron with a head injury or some kind of shady grifter. As it is, I'm a just a faintly bland cis-het boring idiot, so I don't feel confident getting too into the weeds on this one. "Well meaning". That's the two words going through my head during this one. I see the allusions to systemic homophobia and conversion therapy and it's heart rendingly sad. I also see the shortcomings. That the genderless society is uniformly all played by women for instance. That it really highlights how heteronormative Trek was at that point, the way they only discuss gendered relationships via the male/female, etc. But I get it, I suppose. It's still the early 90s, I guess they felt they had to dance around the subject a bit. It feels like a step at least. But then, I've heard Berman remained resistant to anything but the most skeezy "cor look at this lads!" girl on girl kissing right up until he hosed off, so... Anyway. It's good, it made me cry, but I see where it could be criticised. That ending is an absolute pain steamroller. Also, Geordi has a beard now and I hate it.
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Sep 15, 2023 01:33
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Frakes was apparently fine with the character being played by a man, but it was shot down.
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Sep 15, 2023 02:37
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MuddyFunster posted:
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Sep 15, 2023 02:44
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Boxturret posted:Frakes was apparently fine with the character being played by a man, but it was shot down. Yeah, on one hand, there was Frakes who was like, "if we're doing what you say we're doing, this should really be a male actor, or it takes a lot of the bite out," and on the other hand, there was Berman who was like, "we did a perfect job with our gay allegory and gay people still found things to criticize, you can't please them."
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Sep 15, 2023 02:54
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Lord Hydronium posted:He grows another one in season 6 and they comment on it that time. I think one of them was LeVar growing it out for his wedding and the other was just for fun. On Stargate, towards the end of the series Christopher Judge decided to gently caress with the continuity / makeup people by constantly changing his facial hair.
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Sep 15, 2023 02:57
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Kibayasu posted:There are some very weird and specific things I love about Voyager and I loving loved it when they broke out the Janeway tank top survival outfit. Hell that might be the only episode it actually happens in for all the specifics I actually remember it just made an impression okay. That's the look of a captain who gets poo poo done. I love that they clearly redesigned the uniforms a bit for Voyager with the blue undershirts just so they would have layers they could strip down through when things got bad. TheDeadlyShoe posted:Any ship that has a bunch of murderous internal systems designed to kill attackers has an approximately 100% chance of eventually killing its own crew with them Except it's a spaceship, so all its internal systems can pretty much be used to murder people as a side-effect just by doing something 1% off from what they're meant to do anyway. MikeJF fucked around with this message at 03:03 on Sep 15, 2023 |
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Sep 15, 2023 03:01
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MuddyFunster posted:Ethics. Another vague title that you could have applied to any number of episodes and another one I saw you lot talking about here and thought "oh, I don't like the sound of that". Yes, Worf gets twatted by a barrel and we end up with 45 minutes of maudlin, soapy medical melodrama. See, I was prepared to give Violations some credit, it leaps full swandive into pretty dicey subject matter and misses the pool entirely, but it DOES try. This is just loving lazy and boring. The drama isn't there, we know he's going to be on his feet and skipping lightly through the decks of the Enterprise like a giant oafish pixie come the end credits, thanks to Dr. Kate-McKinnon-As-Hillary-Clinton and her super turbo spine rip technique. Zero excitement in that operation sequence and the death fake out, incidentally. Why bother? Watching this in first run as a kid, I completely believed that they'd killed off Worf. I was more or less in shock at the scene where Crusher brings Alexander in to see the body. And then Worf moved or grunted or whatever it was, and I... felt straight-up cheated. They milked the moment so far that the resolution became just a cheap cop-out, and I felt like I'd been played for a chump. That day I learned a valuable lesson about how NOT to end a story.
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Sep 15, 2023 03:05
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MikeJF posted:I love that they clearly redesigned the uniforms a bit for Voyager with the blue undershirts just so they would have layers they could strip down through when things got bad. It would be a good gag for someone to take off the outer top and reveal that they're just wearing a dickey and not the full undershirt, like Dr. Venture.
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Sep 15, 2023 03:27
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speedsuit
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Sep 15, 2023 03:41
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One of the few disappointments with the Voyager episode of Lower Decks is that Mariner didn't get into the Janeway tank top as soon as things went to poo poo.
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Sep 15, 2023 04:12
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Continuing TNG S1: Angel One: The Enterprise gets COVID and Riker gets fabulous. Considering the planet of the week is just a gender-flipped human society the gender politics could have been a lot worse (I would be curious to see what a TOS version of this episode would have looked like). It also did the whole Prime Directive vs death penalty thing a lot better than Justice did just a few episodes ago, since the people involved are non-Starfleet citizens of the Federation (who are not bound by the Prime Directive) and they weren't there by choice but their interference caused lots of issues for the society on the planet while they also became integrated into that society. It's a lucky for the survivors of the crash that Riker passed his Persuasion skill check with his speech at the end. Meanwhile on the ship, everyone pretty much just gets COVID, right down to the inept response from the authorities on the ship (even after Beverly figures out it's airborne they don't take any precautions, I guess some aspects of humanity just didn't evolve over the past 300 years). This one really surprised me, it was much better than I remembered it. 11001001: Not too much to say about this one. It's one of the episodes of S1 that I remember pretty clearly, which is too bad because knowing the outcome really deflates the tension. Those Bynars really had Riker's number with Minuet. Too Short a Season: Another one I have a decent memory of, though I didn't remember this was an S1 episode. It's fun to see the badmiral of the week pulling a similar trump card on Picard that Picard would later try to pull on Captain Shaw in Picard S3 in overriding his command. Again, I don't have much to say about this one. When the Bough Breaks: This is one I've always had a soft spot for, for whatever reason, despite being an episode centered not just on Wesley but other child guest actors. I think I like the concept of the episode and the alien society of the week, independent of the execution which is itself not bad by any means. The alien planet sets were really well done for a location that was just for a one-off episode. One thing I did forget about this episode is that it was the planet's ozone layer being depleted that caused their downfall, and not, say, some kind of radiation given off by their cloaking device. I know that was a big environmental issue at the time, but the causes were very specific to industrial chemicals in-use at the time; also any cloak would replicate the function of the ozone layer in blocking UV radiation from any nearby stars (as otherwise you could just use UV scanners to detect the planet).
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Sep 15, 2023 04:26
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I said a few months ago in my DS9 watch that Move Along Home is a perfectly fine premise. Quark's characterization basically cements everything the character is and will be. Yeah, he's a scoundrel with questionable ethics, but he has heart and deep down does actually give a poo poo about other people. If the games were just updated for 21st century audience sensibilities, it would be perfectly fine.
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Sep 15, 2023 04:29
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Lord Hydronium posted:He grows another one in season 6 and they comment on it that time. I think one of them was LeVar growing it out for his wedding and the other was just for fun. There's a great blooper between Burton and Spiner calling this out too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IY1pmWbytQ4&t=30s
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Sep 15, 2023 05:06
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Mr.Radar posted:One thing I did forget about this episode is that it was the planet's ozone layer being depleted that caused their downfall, and not, say, some kind of radiation given off by their cloaking device. Since this episode came out, the ozone layer has become a huge environmental success story, and I'd love to see it acknowledged as such in new sci-fi. The phase-out of CFCs, which was a pet cause of 80s-90s environmentalism, actually worked. It's expected that the ozone layer will completely regenerate over the next few decades. We absolutely can fix poo poo if we decide to. Which is why I still hold out hope that we can get CO2 under control before it's too late. drat, I feel like Edith Keeler sometimes.
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Sep 15, 2023 05:19
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Star Trek's often had issues with scale, but the aliens in "When the Bough Breaks" thinking the twelve or so kids they abducted are going to make a meaningful difference to their planetary fertility crisis is a particularly egregious example.
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Sep 15, 2023 05:20
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Powered Descent posted:Since this episode came out, the ozone layer has become a huge environmental success story, and I'd love to see it acknowledged as such in new sci-fi. The phase-out of CFCs, which was a pet cause of 80s-90s environmentalism, actually worked. It's expected that the ozone layer will completely regenerate over the next few decades. It's already too late so. CFCs were a byproduct of SOME things instead of the entire world's industry. I mean don't get me wrong it's great it worked but it's one of those cases where "stop using plastic straws" actually IS enough to fix it (as in one small change)
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Sep 15, 2023 07:54
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One of the key things that enabled it to happen is that CFCs were pretty easily replaceable.
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Sep 15, 2023 08:17
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In other news we've just finished Homefront and Paradise Lost in the rewatch and I dislike how small they make the federation feel There's a LITTLE lip service to "what will everyone else say when you do what you're doing" but not quite enough I think. Babylon 5 did it better I'm saying.
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Sep 15, 2023 09:00
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Angry Salami posted:Star Trek's often had issues with scale, but the aliens in "When the Bough Breaks" thinking the twelve or so kids they abducted are going to make a meaningful difference to their planetary fertility crisis is a particularly egregious example. I was feeling that palpably during The Masterpiece Society the other day. A society of thousands represented by a small number of people milling about a courtyard set. An engineering team of fifty, represented by a sad group of five people who are seen beaming in, then later, out. And yeah, let's be practical, there's a lot of episodes like this where a lot of scale goes implied and is never actually seen. But I wasn't feeling or paying attention to that last night with The Outcast which is about the same, but far more engaging. I guess when an episode is as dull as Masterpiece Society, you start looking for loose threads to tug on. On reflection, I still can't get over that episode's conclusion. Picard declaring that the Enterprise crew arriving has done more damage than the core fragment that would have wiped them out completely. That the balance of the thousand strong colony was that fragile, 20 odd people leaving ruins everything and will take years to overcome. That just leads me to believe it was a broken society teetering on the edge of self destruction to begin with and it would have happened sooner or later regardless of the Enterprise. Somebody important trips on a step and cracks their head open, welp, everything's hosed.
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Sep 15, 2023 13:32
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It wasn't that the people left. They could be replaced. It was that the whole civilisation discovered that they could be something else.
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Sep 15, 2023 13:47
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Fair point, I guess it's just the way that's all presented as some cataclysmic event when it really isn't. The way Picard puts it, it feels like he would rather have just let them get wiped out. So what?
MuddyFunster fucked around with this message at 18:31 on Sep 15, 2023 |
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Sep 15, 2023 13:57
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disaster pastor posted:Yeah, on one hand, there was Frakes who was like, "if we're doing what you say we're doing, this should really be a male actor, or it takes a lot of the bite out," and on the other hand, there was Berman who was like, "we did a perfect job with our gay allegory and gay people still found things to criticize, you can't please them."
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Sep 15, 2023 14:52
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Atlas Hugged posted:I said a few months ago in my DS9 watch that Move Along Home is a perfectly fine premise. Quark's characterization basically cements everything the character is and will be. Yeah, he's a scoundrel with questionable ethics, but he has heart and deep down does actually give a poo poo about other people. If the games were just updated for 21st century audience sensibilities, it would be perfectly fine. Imaging them playing some Star Trek version of League and all the aliens calling them feeder scrubs
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Sep 15, 2023 15:45
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Feldegast42 posted:Imaging them playing some Star Trek version of League and all the aliens calling them feeder scrubs I meant more like the kinds of things people expect to see in escape rooms, but yeah that works too.
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Sep 15, 2023 15:51
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Cause and Effect: EVERYBODY FUCKEN' DIED. Then they're alright again. Then EVERYBODY F-you know it, you get the idea. It's a striking and unusually short cold open. Then, oh goodie! Some time loop shenanigans! It's well done, I've got no complaints. We're given Beverly's perspective on everything, which is good, she's a reliable lynchpin and it's great watching her work stuff out before everybody comes into their own to solve the loop. I think where the episode really excels is in the direction. It's eerie. Due to the nature of the story, we're given the same scenes repeatedly, which could become quite dull. But as it all unfolds, the scenes are shot from ever increasing weird angles, paced far more urgently. And then we get Captain Frasier, which is a thing I've seen, but never had the context for, so that's nice. Creepiest detail; the ship blowing up is spectacular and shocking, but I found the wide shot of the bridge with superimposed flames creeping out of the panels real unsettling. The First Duty was a change of pace. Quite pedestrian courtroom fare as it goes, but not entirely without merit. I don't have too much to say about it honestly other than it held my interest. That said, I've no idea why Starfleet Academy has been an on/off TV/movie idea kicked about for decades. I could just about stick it for this episode. Also, yeah, yeah, not-Tom Paris. And Boothby! And Death Wish 3 cop guy, Ed Lauter!
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Sep 16, 2023 00:33
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Yeah, credit to Frakes's direction in "Cause and Effect." I think that episode's a classic, and it definitely wouldn't be if he hadn't managed to make each loop feel juuuuust a bit different. The suspense and nuance build on themselves at exactly the right pace.
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Sep 16, 2023 00:47
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MuddyFunster posted:And Death Wish 3 cop guy, Ed Lauter! Funny, I always think of him as the FBI goon from The Rocketeer.
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Sep 16, 2023 01:02
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I always think of him as the astronaut that gets haunted by the alien ghost in The X-Files.
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Sep 16, 2023 07:21
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Cost of Living was gently funny stuff. Troi's mum is back again, impulsive and flitty as ever and *gulp* she's about to get married and *gulp* she's hanging around with Alexander on the *big gulp* holodeck. It's a perfect storm of stuff that irritates me and around the 15 minute mark I was rolling my eyes very hard, yet it all comes together rather charmingly in the end. Once again, perhaps because it allows Barrett to act out moments of insecurity and doubt, even if they are fleeting this time around. When she quietly tells Alexander about her loneliness, that hits hard. It does of course have the most obviously disconnected A/B plotting I've ever seen in the show. The weird silvery space cloud eating bits of the ship and pooping out orange goo is quite a desperate situation, but we never see it come to bear on all the Lwaxana stuff besides one very unnerving shot of the holodeck breaking down. Still, we get the great Tony Jay with his booming voice, reminding me how much I loved Legacy of Kain back when that was a thing. A hilarious final shot too. Oh, WORF. The Perfect Mate is an interesting, delicate little story that keeps things very low key and conversational without getting too trashy with the subject matter. Because this show seemingly cannot stop doing things in twos, we have another marriage, this time an arranged one. Famke Janssen's er... Thingy. Metamusel, whatever. She's that. Basically, she makes every bloke real lusty. Feels like the set up for some 70s sex comedy, but instead of everybody walking about with tents pitched in their uniform, their glasses steaming over as the gurn and cry "OOOEEER, MISSUS!" it's all buttoned up and reserved and ends without any great speeches about how the arranged marriage is wrong and she should be free to blah-de-blah. Man, this show really knows how to twist the knife sometimes. The stuff with Picard and Beverly is great. The Ferengi continue to be the worst thing ever, I loathe them, sight and sound, terrible, gently caress off.
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Sep 17, 2023 00:46
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I'm not sure but I think The Perfect Mate has Star Trek's only masturbation joke/reference
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Sep 17, 2023 01:24
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MuddyFunster posted:Once again, perhaps because it allows Barrett to act out moments of insecurity and doubt, even if they are fleeting this time around. When she quietly tells Alexander about her loneliness, that hits hard. Majel got a LOT better as an actor between the 60s and the 90s. Whether she gets the chance to do so in any given Lwaxana episode really comes down to who's writing the script, and whether she's just the Auntie Mame comic relief or has actual depths to explore. e: Tighclops posted:I'm not sure but I think The Perfect Mate has Star Trek's only masturbation joke/reference I'm almost certain there was a joke in a DS9 episode about Rom doing oo-mox to himself.
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Sep 17, 2023 01:25
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Tighclops posted:I'm not sure but I think The Perfect Mate has Star Trek's only masturbation joke/reference Does Lower Decks count? Or is that cheating?
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Sep 17, 2023 01:33
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MuddyFunster posted:The Perfect Mate is an interesting, delicate little story that keeps things very low key and conversational without getting too trashy with the subject matter...Man, this show really knows how to twist the knife sometimes. The only thing that partially redeems the episode is the pathos of her morning after with Picard. And the episode adds on a couple of other scenes after that (when the betrothed comes in, I n the transporter room), diluting the effect, instead of just leaving Picard even more alone than he was before, and Kamala (I think that was her name) walking out to an unfulfilled life driven by duty.
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Sep 17, 2023 01:58
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Eh, mileage may vary obviously, it is a particularly horrific bit of subject matter. Perhaps I'm giving it too much credit, but I felt like the idea was that everybody's effected by her and capitulating precisely because of what she is, regardless of their actual feelings on the matter. Granted, I may have read that wrong.
MuddyFunster fucked around with this message at 02:51 on Sep 17, 2023 |
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Sep 17, 2023 02:44
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Tighclops posted:I'm not sure but I think The Perfect Mate has Star Trek's only masturbation joke/reference DS9 has Rom flat out stating that he masterbates a tremendous amount and then someone saying "Oh Ron".
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Sep 17, 2023 05:11
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There's a few episodes like Cost of Living where the B plot just doesn't work at all, and should've been excised entirely. They were unhealthily married to that kind of structure. Getting rid of it would've made episodes like this cheaper to do!
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Sep 17, 2023 06:28
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MuddyFunster posted:Eh, mileage may vary obviously, it is a particularly horrific bit of subject matter. Perhaps I'm giving it too much credit, but I felt like the idea was that everybody's effected by her and capitulating precisely because of what she is, regardless of their actual feelings on the matter. Granted, I may have read that wrong. Yeah, this was my take, too. People were attracted to her because (in the story) she was literally designed that way. Like she had overwhelming subspace psychic pheromones or something. And everyone on the Enterprise was freaked out and disturbed by it. But that doesn't mean there aren't situations where you have to grin and bear it for the sake of diplomacy. And that also doesn't mean that you aren't affected by the same forces everyone else is. The real disturbing part is definitely the end, because Picard (and the audience) think they're doing the right thing by not indulging carnally and just approaching it intellectually, but it turns out it doesn't matter. She was designed to mate and that's exactly what she did, and her life is probably going to be worse off for it. A good ol' twilight zone twist: 'Nice try, rear end in a top hat.' ashpanash fucked around with this message at 10:55 on Sep 17, 2023 |
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Sep 17, 2023 08:40
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Tighclops posted:I'm not sure but I think The Perfect Mate has Star Trek's only masturbation joke/reference "If you need me, I'll be in holodeck 4."
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Sep 17, 2023 10:12
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Symbiosis, one of the worst prime directive episodes or the worst prime directive episode?
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Sep 17, 2023 14:19
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No Dignity posted:Symbiosis, one of the worst prime directive episodes or the worst prime directive episode? just a terrible episode in general
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