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Epicurius posted:I think one of the differences between TOS and TNG was that TNG seemed a lot less tolerant of moral ambiguity than TOS. There were a bunch of TOS episodes where Kirk looked back at the end and said basically, "I did what I had to do and I'm pretty sure what I did was right, but we can't know for sure." TNG seemed a lot more confident that what they were doing was right. I've been watching a ton of TNG in the background while working from home, and I think I'm going to do TOS next. I'm mostly interested in comparing how they have aged, because I suspect that production values aside TOS is starting to age a bit better due to having more ambiguity. The other day I watched True Q and Picards indignant speech to Q on how Q recognised the superiority of human morality because they wouldn't condemn a person to death for who they are was particularly galling given the times that Picard has defended millions dying because of the Prime Directive.
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Jun 9, 2020 02:24
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I would say TNG holds up better overall. There are a lot of TOS episodes that are forgettable or bad. And while yes, TNG has wastes of time like Shades of Grey, TOS has that too with The Menagerie Part 2, which is 85% just rewatching The Cage. I'm not quite finished with TOS, but just going by watching the good episodes, my series ranking is still DS9>TNG>TOS>VOY>ENT>DIS>PIC
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Jun 9, 2020 02:46
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FlamingLiberal posted:I would say TNG holds up better overall. There are a lot of TOS episodes that are forgettable or bad. And while yes, TNG has wastes of time like Shades of Grey, TOS has that too with The Menagerie Part 2, which is 85% just rewatching The Cage. That's about what my ranking would be too. I love TOS and grew up with it, but I think TNG and especially DS9 are better series. TOS is just a bit too dated; especially with the "women...amirite" stuff.
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Jun 9, 2020 02:51
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F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:That's about what my ranking would be too. I love TOS and grew up with it, but I think TNG and especially DS9 are better series. TOS is just a bit too dated; especially with the "women...amirite" stuff. Does anyone know the thought process behind making it so women are barred from command ranks in TI? Seemed weird
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Jun 9, 2020 03:01
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FlamingLiberal posted:I would say TNG holds up better overall. There are a lot of TOS episodes that are forgettable or bad. And while yes, TNG has wastes of time like Shades of Grey, TOS has that too with The Menagerie Part 2, which is 85% just rewatching The Cage. Remember, though, when The Menagerie came out, nobody had seen The Cage except a few screeners at NBC. It was a pilot that didn't get picked up. The first time anybody in the public saw it was 1986, when Roddenberry's black and white print was released on VHS, and didn't show up on TV until a color version of the show was part of a Star Trek special hosted by Patrick Stewart because of the writer's strike. So, while it's just rewatching The Cage for you, for the people who first watched Menagerie, it was the first time they saw any of it. TheDiceMustRoll posted:Does anyone know the thought process behind making it so women are barred from command ranks in TI? Seemed weird In TOS? We don't know there are. The only thing that suggests that is a line in Turnabout Intruder by Janice Lester: quote:JANICE: The year we were together at Starfleet is the only time in my life I was alive. And that's pretty ambiguous. Is she saying women can't become starship captains? Or is she saying that Kirk's ambition to become a starship captain meant that he couldn't pursue a relationship with her, because he was too driven or too busy, or whatever? And is she what she's saying right, or is Kirk humoring her? Janice is pretty embittered and not entirely rational. As far as TOS goes, the highest ranking female officer we see in the series is a Lieutenant Commander, Dr. Mulhall, who shows up in Return to Tomorrow. In "The Cage", of course, the first officer is a woman. Epicurius fucked around with this message at 03:19 on Jun 9, 2020 |
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Jun 9, 2020 03:04
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Epicurius posted:Remember, though, when The Menagerie came out, nobody had seen The Cage except a few screeners at NBC. It was a pilot that didn't get picked up. The first time anybody in the public saw it was 1986, when Roddenberry's black and white print was released on VHS, and didn't show up on TV until a color version of the show was part of a Star Trek special hosted by Patrick Stewart because of the writer's strike. I imagine that it would have been a really impressive episode for people watching it for the first time. A two-parter, whole bunch of new cast members, exploring the history of the Enterprise.
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Jun 9, 2020 03:33
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I always thought it was a shame that all the main ships in the TNG-era were brand-new at the start of the series; I really liked how the OS Enterprise had a history before Kirk took command.
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Jun 9, 2020 05:26
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FlamingLiberal posted:I would say TNG holds up better overall. There are a lot of TOS episodes that are forgettable or bad. And while yes, TNG has wastes of time like Shades of Grey, TOS has that too with The Menagerie Part 2, which is 85% just rewatching The Cage. The people who watched when it aired hadn't seen The Cage or even knew it existed. FE: beaten like that Talosian almost was when Pike went rage-mode on him. FlamingLiberal posted:I'm not quite finished with TOS, but just going by watching the good episodes, my series ranking is still DS9>TNG>TOS>VOY>ENT>DIS>PIC Agree totally except I put ENT a little ahead of VOY.
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Jun 9, 2020 06:24
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Epicurius posted:In TOS? We don't know there are. The only thing that suggests that is a line in Turnabout Intruder by Janice Lester: One retcon I remember reading about was the idea that "Starship" was a specific class limited to the twelve Connies of the time which happened to all have male captains at that point. Essentially, women were not barred but were not represented in that particular small subset of fleet officers where we happened to have a lot of our focus. I think one of the divides between TOS and TNG is that while both of them are earnest, TOS is in a sense rawer and has more ambiguity in it. TNG had less, both by virtue of the era it was in - I do not think it elides the problems of society to say that the late 80s/early 90s were probably more secure-feeling for Americans than the middle 60s - and because it was in TOS's play space, even if they tried to minimize that. Imagine if they had been able to visit some of TOS's plots fresh!
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Jun 9, 2020 06:30
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The Enterprise had a woman first officer as of The Cage so I don’t get that line at all Disco/ENT also establish that even before that there were women captains
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Jun 9, 2020 13:21
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FlamingLiberal posted:The Enterprise had a woman first officer as of The Cage so I don’t get that line at all I mean, the Cage never aired, and Enterprise and Disco were made about 50 or 60 years after Turnabout Intruder respectively, so I don't know that those are good guides to what's true or not in the world of TOS.
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Jun 9, 2020 13:36
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Angry Salami posted:I always thought it was a shame that all the main ships in the TNG-era were brand-new at the start of the series; I really liked how the OS Enterprise had a history before Kirk took command. Start watching TNG at season 3, that solves this and other problems.
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Jun 9, 2020 13:51
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PerniciousKnid posted:Start watching TNG at season 3, that solves this and other problems. Mainly the problem of being too square to handle Weird Trek
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Jun 9, 2020 13:57
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Senor Tron posted:I've been watching a ton of TNG in the background while working from home, and I think I'm going to do TOS next. I'm mostly interested in comparing how they have aged, because I suspect that production values aside TOS is starting to age a bit better due to having more ambiguity. Nah it really doesn't. Playing fast and loose with the Prime Directive is a two-way street. For every episode where they take a worthwhile risk and perhaps display a more mature and realistic attitude than TNG, there are like 5 more where Kirk goes "your planet sucks, get a real job". And despite their heart obviously being in the right place, there's no shortage of sexism and other stereotypes that wouldn't fly today. Some of the characters hold up better just by virtue of being better characters in general, but in terms of moral/political stuff it's absolutely more outdated. I'm not saying it's bad though. Just outdated.
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Jun 9, 2020 14:15
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Epicurius posted:I mean, the Cage never aired, and Enterprise and Disco were made about 50 or 60 years after Turnabout Intruder respectively, so I don't know that those are good guides to what's true or not in the world of TOS. The Cage may not have aired, but "The Menagerie" did and unless I'm forgetting some editing, it was established in that who Pike's first officer was.
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Jun 9, 2020 14:25
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bull3964 posted:The Cage may not have aired, but "The Menagerie" did and unless I'm forgetting some editing, it was established in that who Pike's first officer was.
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Jun 9, 2020 14:36
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Yeah, the worst thing about my TOS rewatch by far is the casual misogyny. As a teenager I saw it but was able to more easily dismiss it as being from another era, but that's a lot more difficult these days when I have more context and history. But I'm able to remind myself that in The Cage, the context of the "women on the bridge" line was directed at men in the audience who were grumbling about women in their offices starting to get a bit more power. So that helps to some degree. The occasional dull episode is still charming to me, though. I just love pulp sci-fi and even the worst TOS episodes have some pulpy goodness in them, and the characters and world are so well-realized that it's never boring to me. feedmyleg fucked around with this message at 15:16 on Jun 9, 2020 |
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Jun 9, 2020 15:14
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The thing that leavens that, though, is that for the most part, Kirk isn't that misogynistic. For the most part, Kirk's relationship with his female crew is "You're a Starfleet officer, and I expect you to act like one.", and he doesn't really treat women very differently than he treats men. Most of the misogyny on the show, when it shows up is from McCoy or Spock.
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Jun 9, 2020 17:14
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It's also the writing itself; there seems to be a good amount of "oh my stars, how will I, a woman, deal with this issue? If only there was a man around to help!"
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Jun 9, 2020 17:42
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Snow Cone Capone posted:It's also the writing itself; there seems to be a good amount of "oh my stars, how will I, a woman, deal with this issue? If only there was a man around to help!" I talked about it a bit but there’s this three episode stretch of TNG S2 where objectifying women is the b-plot if not the A-plot (Outrageous Okona, Where Silence Has Lease, The Schizoid Man) and it just almost got me to stop there. Like I know the franchise as a whole is better than this but just watching all of that back to back to back was really dispiriting.
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Jun 9, 2020 17:53
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Skipped the "Kes in heat" episode of Voyager during my rewatch. Next up was Non Sequitur, which would have likely been a 15 minute episode if Harry wasn't a moron.
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Jun 9, 2020 23:51
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Voyager probably could have been avoided entirely if Harry wasn’t a moron, somehow.
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Jun 10, 2020 00:00
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Kibayasu posted:Voyager probably could have been avoided entirely if Harry wasn’t a moron, somehow. They built a slipstream drive once and it worked but Voyager was destroyed because he wanted to do the flight calculations manually instead of have the computer do it When he went back in time to undo his mistake they never tried again even though they could have taken the exact same trip and stopped before they crashed and skipped like 50 years
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Jun 10, 2020 00:06
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John Wick of Dogs posted:They built a slipstream drive once and it worked but Voyager was destroyed because he wanted to do the flight calculations manually instead of have the computer do it It also worked over short jumps. They could have made the trip in hops instead of all at once Edit: uuggghhh. I forgot how many episodes had this awful nelix jealousy subplot. OK, fanfic "fix Voyager" time again. Combine Nelix and Kes into one character (no, not like Tuvix) played by Jennifer Lien. Make her an ocampa (who live to be 30-40 instead of 7) who left her world and became the potentially interesting character that Nelix seemed to be in the first couple of episodes. Keep Ethan Phillips around as like an upbeat maquis or something. It's not his fault they wrote a horrible character for him. 8one6 fucked around with this message at 05:51 on Jun 10, 2020 |
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Jun 10, 2020 00:11
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Epicurius posted:The thing that leavens that, though, is that for the most part, Kirk isn't that misogynistic. For the most part, Kirk's relationship with his female crew is "You're a Starfleet officer, and I expect you to act like one.", and he doesn't really treat women very differently than he treats men. Most of the misogyny on the show, when it shows up is from McCoy or Spock. Kirk is such a weird character in that he's basically a boy scout - he gets his rear end kicked all the time, they say he was a huge socially isolated nerd at the academy that got beaten up by an irish person so stereotypical he was basically a leprechaun and lusted over one (1) woman the entire time and spent all his time reading books. He keeps a really cool head in almost every situation so every time Kirk is possessed or whatever and doesn't act like himself everyone instantly knows something is off. He has a tiny bit of the ladies man vibe to him but its rarely shown and most made in comments from McCoy and Spock. It really isn't until WoK that he gets the idea that he's a rulebreaker, as you learn about him hacking the KM test and then he steals the enterprise (and honestly, he's barely a rulebreaker at heart, since his plan at the start of IV was to turn himself in for a court martial). Meanwhile, Picard was a drunken layabout who almost got killed because he started a barfight with two guys at once and I'm pretty sure that his female friend in the tapestry episode makes references to notches on a belt or whatever. Picard's growth from his college days seems to be "jackass who learned that loving around too hard gets you murdered" and "pasty nerd becomes attractive chad in his 30's (also known as the Jay Bauman effect)".
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Jun 10, 2020 03:06
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Sir Lemming posted:Nah it really doesn't. Playing fast and loose with the Prime Directive is a two-way street. For every episode where they take a worthwhile risk and perhaps display a more mature and realistic attitude than TNG, there are like 5 more where Kirk goes "your planet sucks, get a real job". And despite their heart obviously being in the right place, there's no shortage of sexism and other stereotypes that wouldn't fly today. Some of the characters hold up better just by virtue of being better characters in general, but in terms of moral/political stuff it's absolutely more outdated. TNG's take on the Prime Directive in episodes like Pen Pals and Homeward is hot dogshit though. It's so ridiculously absolute that they're willing to just let whole peoples go extinct rather than do a drat thing. Riker's pondering about a "cosmic plan" that might require some planets to die out is absolutely out of place.
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Jun 10, 2020 07:12
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:TNG's take on the Prime Directive in episodes like Pen Pals and Homeward is hot dogshit though. It's so ridiculously absolute that they're willing to just let whole peoples go extinct rather than do a drat thing. Riker's pondering about a "cosmic plan" that might require some planets to die out is absolutely out of place. To join the Space Utopia Socialism Club™ every civilization has to pull themselves up by the boot straps first.
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Jun 10, 2020 07:28
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Nessus posted:One retcon I remember reading about was the idea that "Starship" was a specific class limited to the twelve Connies of the time which happened to all have male captains at that point. Essentially, women were not barred but were not represented in that particular small subset of fleet officers where we happened to have a lot of our focus. I picked up that impression too, possibly out of the early EU stuff.
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Jun 10, 2020 07:39
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:TNG's take on the Prime Directive in episodes like Pen Pals and Homeward is hot dogshit though. It's so ridiculously absolute that they're willing to just let whole peoples go extinct rather than do a drat thing. Riker's pondering about a "cosmic plan" that might require some planets to die out is absolutely out of place. At least Troi calls Riker out on the "cosmic plan" bullshit. But I've always preferred TOS's more pragmatic approach to the Prime Directive over TNG's take. Unfortunately from what I've seen of it in Disco they seem to go with TNG's take, and it will probably be the same in the new Pike show.
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Jun 10, 2020 09:36
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https://twitter.com/thepulserifle/status/1270642738724139008?s=21 Wise Fwom Yo Gwave fucked around with this message at 10:12 on Jun 10, 2020 |
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Jun 10, 2020 10:04
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Much Bij was experienced on that day, let me tell you h’what.
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Jun 10, 2020 10:10
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:TNG's take on the Prime Directive in episodes like Pen Pals and Homeward is hot dogshit though. It's so ridiculously absolute that they're willing to just let whole peoples go extinct rather than do a drat thing. Riker's pondering about a "cosmic plan" that might require some planets to die out is absolutely out of place. Yeah I know. I still think there's no way you can say TOS aged better on the whole. Unless you take the view that it's so obviously old in every way, the outdated stuff goes down easier.
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Jun 10, 2020 14:12
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Pen Pals and Homeward are bad, but there are better TNG Prime Directive episodes like Who Watches the Watchers
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Jun 10, 2020 14:19
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FlamingLiberal posted:Pen Pals and Homeward are bad, but there are better TNG Prime Directive episodes like Who Watches the Watchers That's the one where Picard goes on an anti-religious rant, right?
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Jun 10, 2020 14:27
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Epicurius posted:That's the one where Picard goes on an anti-religious rant, right? That's the one, yep
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Jun 10, 2020 14:52
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Eighties ZomCom posted:At least Troi calls Riker out on the "cosmic plan" bullshit. But I've always preferred TOS's more pragmatic approach to the Prime Directive over TNG's take. Unfortunately from what I've seen of it in Disco they seem to go with TNG's take, and it will probably be the same in the new Pike show. Eh, in the very first scenes of Disco they're on a mission to sneak down to a preindustrial planet without disturbing the locals to reverse a natural ecological incident that would send them extinct, which is something TOS would be fine with and TNG would've been stupid about. MikeJF fucked around with this message at 16:24 on Jun 10, 2020 |
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Jun 10, 2020 16:17
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MikeJF posted:Eh, in the very first scenes of Disco they're on a mission to sneak down to a preindustrial planet without disturbing the locals to reverse a natural ecological incident that would send them extinct, which is something TOS would be fine with and TNG would've been stupid about. Oh yeah. I was just thinking about the episode where they go to that human colony and Pike is all "Don't tell them anything about Earth because Prime Directive" and leave behind the one guy who figures it out.
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Jun 10, 2020 16:27
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Any suggestions for Star Trek novels that are good, preferably in the TNG/DS9 eras?
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Jun 11, 2020 00:48
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A4R8 posted:Any suggestions for Star Trek novels that are good, preferably in the TNG/DS9 eras? I haven’t read anything recent but: It’s TOS but Prime Directive is a great book. Strangers from the Sky and Final Frontier (not to be confused with the movie) are also good. I also enjoyed the New Earth series. There weren’t as many standout TNG books that I read but Vendetta is one. I never read the first Imazdi book but the second one was enjoyable. Q in Law is good in a kind of dumb way. DS9 didn’t get many books when I was reading them. The numbered novels, like TNG’s books, are all pretty standard. The 34th Rule is partially written by Armin Shimerman and is mostly worth it. Stitch is Time is basically just the backstory Andrew Robinson put together for Garak turned into a novel. The Millenium series is a alternate timeline/dimension story (not the MU though) that I liked. The New Frontier series, at least to when I stopped reading it, is a fairly different series that most Trek books. Its more of an action comedy than anything else, with a fairly irreverent tone to violence. Being different alone made it enjoyable to me but YMMV depending on how much you like deadpan humor.
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Jun 11, 2020 02:22
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Diane Duane's books were mostly TOS books, but she wrote a mirror universe TNG book called "Dark Mirror" that was pretty good. Federation, by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, is also good, and so is their series, Deep Space 9: Millennium, which I second. I'd also recommend David Goodman's "The Autobiography of Jean-Luc Picard, as well as his earlier The Autobiography of James T. Kirk. The Autobiography of Kathryn Janeway and The Autobiography of Mr. Spock are also supposed to be out soon, but they keep pushing the Mr. Spock one further out for some reason. Another DS9 book, if you like Cardassians, is Una McCormack's "The Never-Ending Sacrifice", which is the story of the kid from the DS9 episode "Cardassians", from that episode to the end of the Dominion War. There's also the Star Trek: Terok Nor trilogy: Nest of Vipers, Night of the Wolves, and Dawn of the Eagles, which is about the Cardassian occupation of Bajor from conquest to liberation.
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Jun 11, 2020 03:24
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