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Wheat Loaf posted:Did he go back to teaching theatre? I think he's a tenured professor, isn't he?
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Mar 1, 2015 22:47
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Vagabundo posted:Once you're done with that, read Beowulf which is Harry Kim's favourite book. I recommend the Seamus Heaney translation. And what was wrong with Harry Kim as Beowulf? 
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Mar 1, 2015 22:58
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Brooks would be loving terrifying to have a professor. I feel like he's always 2 seconds away from snapping someone's neck and laughing about it.
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Mar 1, 2015 22:58
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I heard he taped lectures to his classes while in Sisko costume. I would love to see those tapes.Vagabundo posted:The Tolkien translation got published recently, but I have no idea if it's any good or not. Mind you, I've tried reading Tolkien before and I just couldn't. Nessus fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Mar 1, 2015 |
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Mar 1, 2015 22:59
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Sash! posted:Sometimes I wonder if there's not some better translation waiting to be done, but it will never be finished because everyone just reads the Heaney translation. The Tolkien translation got published recently, but I have no idea if it's any good or not. Mind you, I've tried reading Tolkien before and I just couldn't. Mister Adequate posted:And what was wrong with Harry Kim as Beowulf? Harry Kim.
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Mar 1, 2015 23:01
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While I don't know a great deal about this, I've heard Tolkien in his academic career was known for doing a lot to rehabilitate Beowolf in the eyes of scholars.
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Mar 1, 2015 23:13
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Yeah, he was one of the great scholars of the text. Apparently his translation is closer to the original text than Heaney, but it lacks the flow that Heaney applied to it and ends up feeling more cluttered as a result.
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Mar 1, 2015 23:17
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Vagabundo posted:Yeah, he was one of the great scholars of the text. Apparently his translation is closer to the original text than Heaney, but it lacks the flow that Heaney applied to it and ends up feeling more cluttered as a result.
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Mar 1, 2015 23:29
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Sash! posted:Sometimes I wonder if there's not some better translation waiting to be done, but it will never be finished because everyone just reads the Heaney translation. I did a bunch of Beowulf in grad school. People do keep putting out competing translations, and you'll find people who prefer another one, but the general consensus is that the Heaney translation does things pretty well. There are the usual squabbles among academics about how he does this line wrong, or his misses this point, but it's always an irritation and not a damning feature (and for what it's worth they bicker about editions of the Old English text too). As Nothus Infelix said, Heaney also was not an Anglo-Saxonist, but a poet who had read Anglo-Saxon in British College, so many nuances are glossed over in favor of sounding prettier, and we get very literal translations written for teaching purposes. For the most part, they'll say "If you're a native English speaker who's really into Beowulf, it's not that hard to get a working knowledge of the language and just read it," and in fact there are editions of the poem with running vocab lists in the margin, and you get a different kind of insight than you do from reading the Heaney translation, but like  What everyone agrees on is that there are many, many worse translations. Andy Orchard (probably the predominant living Beowulf scholar) does an amazing routine on William Morris's bizarrely awful one: http://morrisedition.lib.uiowa.edu/Images/Beowulf98/pageflip1-50.html It relies a lot on just not actually translating words, so you end up with "And in the merrymound mead-skenking" "they poured mead in the hall" because the text says dream-seala (joy-hall) and uses the verb scencan (to draw out). One of Tolkien's most lasting contributions was a widely available essay (it gets reprinted in everything; there was a time that I had five separate copies of it on my bookshelf), "The Monsters and the Critics," which offered a comprehensive, big-picture reading of the poem on a textual level. This or less lead directly to the current state of Beowulf studies, because Tolkien encouraged us to go from viewing Beowulf as an epic poem or a king's history (which are things it is not very good at being) to talking about it as an intricate thematic and linguistic puzzle that happens to include some action sequences that are actually thematically difficult and weird. This is all to say that it is offensively stupid for Harry Kim's favorite book to be Beowulf because it is such a thrilling action-adventure.
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Mar 2, 2015 00:42
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Or, Beowulf has a lot more character development than Harry Kim does.
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Mar 2, 2015 00:47
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Beowulf at least got to die. They didn't even give Harry Kim that.
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Mar 2, 2015 00:49
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Apoplexy posted:Beowulf at least got to die. They didn't even give Harry Kim that. Well, they sort of did. It's just that no one cares because gently caress Harry Kim.
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Mar 2, 2015 00:52
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Apoplexy posted:Beowulf at least got to die. They didn't even give Harry Kim that. Didn't he die, but then come back to life that one time? Or was that just in the Holodeck or a psychic vision or something? It all sort of blurs together.
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Mar 2, 2015 01:54
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betaraywil posted:For the most part, they'll say "If you're a native English speaker who's really into Beowulf, it's not that hard to get a working knowledge of the language and just read it," and in fact there are editions of the poem with running vocab lists in the margin, and you get a different kind of insight than you do from reading the Heaney translation, but like The Beowulf I read in high school had the translation on the even number pages and (I think) Old English on the odd number page. It felt totally wasted on high school level book. College was the Heaney one, as I confirmed from the copy that is still on my bookshelf all these years later.
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Mar 2, 2015 01:55
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My fiancee and I are going through the Treks together and we've just started Voyager a couple weeks ago. Whilst I'm not actually finding it all that bad, there are two things that are standing out to me; First, a hell of a lot of episodes so far are doing something like 2spooky  stuff, time fuckery,  , Chakotay is a ghost, whatever. Those always cropped up now and then in Trek but dang, there's more here than with DS9 and that was a show with ethereal aliens who can explicitly possess people as one of the most important parts of the whole drat thing. Anyway I'm curious as to whether my perception is right and, if so, whether explanations were offered for that. Were they trying to make the Delta Quadrant feel more different and unusual to the stuff we had seen mostly in TNG?Second, I get the feeling a lot of these episode would rocket from "Yeah it was okay" to "drat that was great" if they'd just had more time to build on things. It really comes home how much of Voyager's lost potential - and I agree totally with the goon who was saying its biggest issue was lost potential a day or two ago - seems to have come from studio constraints that insisted episodes be largely self-contained. There are some genuinely good and interesting ideas in there, like exploring how holo technology can have way more applications than letting Moriarty shut down the ship (Neelix's lungs for instance) but so much of it feels flawed not because of inherent problems with the ideas so much as needing to do a two-parter for something, or to have some issue take place as the B-plot of like three episodes before it came to the fore.
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Mar 2, 2015 02:13
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Sash! posted:The Beowulf I read in high school had the translation on the even number pages and (I think) Old English on the odd number page. It felt totally wasted on high school level book. I've actually got a Heaney with the facing pages, which is a pretty nice book. I actually at one point had two, for a total of five copies of the poem: a Norton critical (Heaney), a library copy of the Heaney with facing-pages, a second copy of that that my professor gave out to everyone because he'd been assigning that book for so long that he had enough desk copies to give everyone one, a critical edition of the Anglo-Saxon text, and the Anglo-Saxon text with running vocab from when I took a B-wulf class in undergrad. I've never been clear on whether this is a thing that happens to everyone, or whether it's because there's so little Anglo-Saxon surviving, so we just have to study the hell out of Beowulf.
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Mar 2, 2015 02:47
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Mister Adequate posted:My fiancee and I are going through the Treks together and we've just started Voyager a couple weeks ago. Whilst I'm not actually finding it all that bad, there are two things that are standing out to me; quote:Second, I get the feeling a lot of these episode would rocket from "Yeah it was okay" to "drat that was great" if they'd just had more time to build on things. It really comes home how much of Voyager's lost potential - and I agree totally with the goon who was saying its biggest issue was lost potential a day or two ago - seems to have come from studio constraints that insisted episodes be largely self-contained. There are some genuinely good and interesting ideas in there, like exploring how holo technology can have way more applications than letting Moriarty shut down the ship (Neelix's lungs for instance) but so much of it feels flawed not because of inherent problems with the ideas so much as needing to do a two-parter for something, or to have some issue take place as the B-plot of like three episodes before it came to the fore.
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Mar 2, 2015 05:59
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I think early Voyager was hurt badly by network pressure to keep each episode self-contained - the Kazon, for example, were clearly designed with the idea that they weren't all that dangerous in any one encounter, but being constantly under attack by them would gradually wear the ship down. But then Voyager gets magically repaired between episodes so all you're left with is a recurring enemy that isn't ever actually a threat.
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Mar 2, 2015 06:36
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Picking up on Enterprise now that I'm trying to get to sleep, watched the one where Phlox has to hang out with a guy who is mutually racist against him. It didn't really go off, but I like it as a heavy handed scifi morality setup. Meanwhile, trip yelling at the scientists to leave their stupid rocks in the cave was solid. I can't wait to see what they do with this third sex thing. You think it'll be a travesty somehow?
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Mar 2, 2015 06:52
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Wheat Loaf posted:Didn't he die, but then come back to life that one time? Or was that just in the Holodeck or a psychic vision or something? It all sort of blurs together. Technically, everything past the season two episode Deadlock is a replacement from another copy of Voyager. He had the most underwhelming and terrible death in that episode, too. I almost miss Aatrek with his animated gifs of terrible and awesome Star Trek moments, because that's definitely one of the better ones.
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Mar 2, 2015 07:06
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betaraywil posted:I can't wait to see what they do with this third sex thing. You think it'll be a travesty somehow? The only episode more hammy is the Vulcan Mind Rape / Aids episode.
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Mar 2, 2015 08:45
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Apple Jax posted:
When I was young I missed a funeral for a former close friend once, because I didn't really know how to deal with it, and I didn't see how me being there could help or change anything. Dealing with loss is intensely personal. I think Shatner is getting a little extra scrutiny on this because it was widely reported, possibly in error, that he didn't attend Roddenberry's funeral.
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Mar 2, 2015 11:45
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Met posted:The only episode more hammy is the Vulcan Mind Rape / Aids episode. Maybe it was the sleepless delirium, but I kind of liked this one. I really appreciated how for just this one time, the alien didn't have any secret agenda or want anything except to make new friends. Even when Archer is like "yeah I need to at least consider this asylum request" the guy is like "well I'm not really in a hurry, so take your time." It was like he was meeting Picard. A whole lot fell flat (Trip tries to console Archer when he gives his "I'm disappointed in you but not as disappointed as I am in myself for raising you wrong" thing). But as ENT episodes go (and as far as "Ahh Prime Directive" episodes go, for that matter), it was great! Next one (Archer talks about being a test pilot) put me right to goddam sleep. "Fighting won't bring you any closer to Warp 5!"
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Mar 2, 2015 15:17
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Mister Adequate posted:Second, I get the feeling a lot of these episode would rocket from "Yeah it was okay" to "drat that was great" if they'd just had more time to build on things. It really comes home how much of Voyager's lost potential - and I agree totally with the goon who was saying its biggest issue was lost potential a day or two ago - seems to have come from studio constraints that insisted episodes be largely self-contained. Very little of Voyager is offensively bad, ie. "Threshold". The vast bulk of it is "meh". For Star Trek that can be fine. TNG and DS9 had plenty of okay episodes, but they also occasionally hit home runs with really great ones. Voyager and Enterprise never get that far because every time a writer had an exciting idea, Rick Berman was there to say "we can't do that because it's not Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek." So the version that makes it to the screen is a watered-down script with a decent premise bent into the standard Trek formula. The first episode of season 5 ("Night") starts in a really interesting place. Voyager is travelling through a massive empty region of space, they haven't encountered anything or anyone in months and it could continue that way for years. Janeway has retreated to her quarters and is brooding on her decision to strand the ship in the Delta Quadrant, no-one has seen her in weeks. The ship is running on skeleton crews because there's nothing to do and the crew is slowly going nuts from boredom. It feels dangerous, like things could genuinely start to unravel. Then suddenly they meet some sad underdog aliens and a mean bully alien and the rest is just a cookie cutter morality play about pollution. Thanks, Rick.
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Mar 2, 2015 15:35
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shadok posted:Very little of Voyager is offensively bad, ie. "Threshold". The vast bulk of it is "meh". For Star Trek that can be fine. TNG and DS9 had plenty of okay episodes, but they also occasionally hit home runs with really great ones. Voyager and Enterprise never get that far because every time a writer had an exciting idea, Rick Berman was there to say "we can't do that because it's not Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek." So the version that makes it to the screen is a watered-down script with a decent premise bent into the standard Trek formula. I almost posted this earlier, but something to keep in mind is that Piller was equally guilty of championing ~*Gene's vision*~. I think it was in Fade In where he said that on Voyager, he had become the cranky old man telling a lot of the writers "that's not how Star Trek works". Remember that when Piller was confronted with Gene saying "no, this story won't work, because in the 24th century people don't grieve" (despite half the cast crying at Tasha Yar's funeral just a couple of years prior), his response was not "ugh, I guess I have to work around this senile old man somehow", but "oh wow this is such a brilliant artistic constraint! I'm going to call it the Roddenberry box!"
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Mar 2, 2015 16:19
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Also, I know this is from way the hell back, but...MikeJF posted:They were, but stop motion style. They'd move the camera, shoot a frame, move the camera, shoot a frame, etc. At least initially, at Howard Anderson. Film Effects might've been able to do it live on the dolly, but I'm not sure about that. I'm not sure the motion blur on the title fly-bys is really consistent with the technique you're describing. Maybe they did it stop-motion for the first pilot?
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Mar 2, 2015 16:24
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:I almost posted this earlier, but something to keep in mind is that Piller was equally guilty of championing ~*Gene's vision*~. I think it was in Fade In where he said that on Voyager, he had become the cranky old man telling a lot of the writers "that's not how Star Trek works". That is true. Ron Moore talked about it in That Interview. I guess I just forgive Piller because the net gain on writing quality was so dramatic when he joined the staff. Also, Ron Moore's theory that it was the decade of Trek conventions that drove Roddenberry away from good storytelling in favour of "Starfleet Is Perfect" might have some truth to it, but the roots were definitely already there even in TOS. His meddling in Harlan Ellison's script for "The City on the Edge of Forever" is well documented and that was right back in season 1, 1967. shadok fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Mar 2, 2015 |
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Mar 2, 2015 16:58
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shadok posted:That is true. Ron Moore talked about it in That Interview. I guess I just forgive Piller because the net gain on writing quality was so dramatic when he joined the staff. To be fair, though, Ellison's original script would have been prohibitively expensive to shoot now. In '67 it was flat out impossible. Some changes were required to get the thing on-screen. Whether or not all the changes were necessary or helped the finished product can be debated, but since "City on the Edge of Forever" is generally considered one of the best if not the best episode of TOS, I'm inclined to give Gene the benefit of the doubt on this one. I mean, yes, I know what you're thinking about...the excision of the drug dealing Starfleet officer...but that may not have been about imposing "Federation Utopia" as much as choosing to focus on Kirk, Spock, and McCoy over spending screen time on some random sleazebag we'd never heard of before, nor would ever again once the end credits rolled.
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Mar 2, 2015 17:10
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jng2058 posted:I mean, yes, I know what you're thinking about...the excision of the drug dealing Starfleet officer That, but mostly the ending. Ellison's original script called for Kirk to attempt to save Edith Keeler, to be held back by Spock. Roddenberry flatly refused and rewrote it to the ending that was shot, because a Starfleet captain wouldn't do that. I just wanted to point out that he was already making this kind of note even back in season 1 of TOS, it wasn't something that started in TNG. jng2058 posted:To be fair, though, Ellison's original script would have been prohibitively expensive to shoot now. In '67 it was flat out impossible. Some changes were required to get the thing on-screen. According to Ellison (I know, I know) this was way overblown by Roddenberry. His book about the whole situation includes letters and documents from Desilu at the time showing that a) Ellison happily made several rewrites to reduce production costs, and b) according to Roddenberry in a 1967 letter, the episode (based on his version of the script) ultimately went over by about $56,000 and everyone was fine with it. It was in interviews years later where he repeatedly claimed that the original script would have cost $200,000 over budget. And changing the ending, the thing he was most angry about, cost $0.
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Mar 2, 2015 18:00
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Got another "best episode"-ish question. The girl I'm currently dating has never seen any Star Trek besides the reboot movies, but knows I'm a fan and wants to watch an episode of each series to see if any of them are to her liking, with the caveat of no two-parters. However, I'm having trouble picking an ENT and TNG episode. Here's my tentative list: TOS: Balance of Terror TNG: Who Watches the Watchers DS9: Duet VOY: Timeless ENT: No loving clue I'm looking for an episode that covers what the series is like when it's being genuinely good and doesn't demand you be familiar with the setting already, but I'm coming up empty for ENT and I'm not very satisfied with my TNG pick - The Inner Light is great, but it's not an especially good Star Trek episode as it were, in my opinion.
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Mar 2, 2015 18:07
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I would suggest The Drumhead or Measure of a Man for TNG. Neither require great knowledge of the characters, but showcase the real heart of the series.
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Mar 2, 2015 18:10
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Measure of a Man is an amazing episode but I'd actually go with Darmok, as controversial as that may seem. MoaM is like a total TNG stereotype - lots and lots of orating around tables in beige rooms. Darmok hits all the TNG themes and has a pretty tense space battle that people forget about (the enterprise is just about to be blown up by the Tamarians before Picard is able to return and communicate).
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Mar 2, 2015 18:17
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Cythereal posted:TNG: Who Watches the Watchers quote:I'm looking for an episode that covers what the series is like when it's being genuinely good  Go with something like Measure of a Man, Cause and Effect or Chain of Command.
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Mar 2, 2015 18:18
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Who Watches The Watches is an outstanding episode, one of TNG's finest.
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Mar 2, 2015 18:19
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TNG suggestions: The Measure of a Man, Darmok, Starship Mine, Ensign Ro, Lower Decks TOS suggestion: The Doomsday Machine. I sure do love The Doomsday Machine. ENT suggestions: Similtude, The Catwalk, Dead Stop
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Mar 2, 2015 18:22
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I think Chain of Command would be good if you don't mind including a two-parter.
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Mar 2, 2015 18:22
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Cythereal posted:Got another "best episode"-ish question. The girl I'm currently dating has never seen any Star Trek besides the reboot movies, but knows I'm a fan and wants to watch an episode of each series to see if any of them are to her liking, with the caveat of no two-parters. However, I'm having trouble picking an ENT and TNG episode. Ugh. Duet? Really? Here's what I'd go with: TOS: Mirror, Mirror TNG: Peak Performance DS9: In The Pale Moonlight (even though it's in the middle of the story arc, it still makes a good standalone piece) VOY: Blink Of An Eye ENT: Dear Doctor
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Mar 2, 2015 18:24
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Seconding Darmok. It's a good episode, requires next to no knowledge of the characters, and she'll get one of the bigger TNG memes.
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Mar 2, 2015 18:24
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Timby posted:
The Prime Directive is kinda a big deal in Star Trek, and I felt Who Watches the Watchers is probably the show's best look at it. But yeah, Measure of a Man is probably better.
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Mar 2, 2015 18:25
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ScreamingLlama posted:DS9: In The Pale Moonlight (even though it's in the middle of the story arc, it still makes a good standalone piece) No-one loves "In the Pale Moonlight" more than me but you need a metric assload of backstory to appreciate the story. Even "Duet", and I speak from personal experience here, requires a five-minute history lesson about the occupation, resistance and liberation of Bajor with associated commentary on the militaristic aspect of Cardassian society and the consequences of Federation neutrality.
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Mar 2, 2015 18:32
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