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MuddyFunster posted:Identity Crisis, come the gently caress on, what was that? Already wasn't on board for another round of "Geordie sits in ten forward and boisterously laughs like a weirdo in the proximity of women", this really is far too soon after Galaxy's Child. But then, the episode itself is just the dumbest of dumb schlock. He yet again attempts to solve a mystery by heading off into the holodeck and is farting about in there for far too goddamn long, before turning into a ludicrous UV light monster that certainly wasn't intended to hold up to HD scrutiny. Boy oh boy, what a pile of poo poo. Identity crisis isn't a great episode, but it's also an episode I point out that when TNG dips into Horror, it often does it quite well.
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# ? Sep 1, 2023 12:20 |
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# ? May 25, 2024 13:09 |
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I did make a big thing of it coming soon after Galaxy's Child, but also bears pointing out, it's directly after Night Terrors, which I liked a lot more for horror. There've been episodes that did impending doom well before, but I think that's one of the best, everybody's so fried and out of it, the situation seems really genuinely hopeless and Beverly's morgue hallucination is brill.
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# ? Sep 1, 2023 13:02 |
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The holodeck shadow revelation in Identity Crisis freaked me the gently caress out as a kid. Such a good reveal. Has similar vibes to the operating table recreation in the holodeck in the abduction episode.
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# ? Sep 1, 2023 21:17 |
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davidspackage posted:You go to Marina's house, and her living room is just the bridge set she smuggled out of the studio Staff writer Ronald D. Moore rescued some famous set decorations from a dumpster at the end of TNG and (eventually) put them up in his home. https://twitter.com/RonDMoore/status/601911511821324288
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# ? Sep 1, 2023 21:47 |
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Powered Descent posted:Staff writer Ronald D. Moore rescued some famous set decorations from a dumpster at the end of TNG and (eventually) put them up in his home. I'm surprised they didn't try to auction those off.
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# ? Sep 1, 2023 21:55 |
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davidspackage posted:You go to Marina's house, and her living room is just the bridge set she smuggled out of the studio Season 3 of Picard was filmed from Marina's house.
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# ? Sep 1, 2023 21:56 |
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Penitent posted:I'm surprised they didn't try to auction those off. Its all modus operandi for Paramount; "no you cant keep your costume or take any memorabilia regardless of how much money you made for us", "no we wont auction these to you fans because we might need them later" --> Throws them to trash bin 2-3 months down the road, files a police report if someone is caught trash diving the dump site their contractor uses.
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# ? Sep 1, 2023 21:57 |
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Some stuff did get saved but a lot of things just got thrown in a dumpster unfortunately. Like I don't think anything from the original TNG bridge is still around.
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# ? Sep 1, 2023 22:09 |
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Powered Descent posted:Staff writer Ronald D. Moore rescued some famous set decorations from a dumpster at the end of TNG and (eventually) put them up in his home. I always loved how crappy these sculptures looked up close, the electroplated AMT model kits from First Contact still seemed cheap but better
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# ? Sep 1, 2023 22:36 |
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davidspackage posted:You go to Marina's house, and her living room is just the bridge set she smuggled out of the studio Little known fact, she replaced her costume bra padding with her bridge chair on the last day and nobody noticed.
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# ? Sep 1, 2023 23:09 |
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FlamingLiberal posted:Some stuff did get saved but a lot of things just got thrown in a dumpster unfortunately. Like I don't think anything from the original TNG bridge is still around. The only thing from the original TNG bridge that survived (and got re-used on Picard) is the dedication plaque.
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# ? Sep 1, 2023 23:31 |
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McSpanky posted:Little known fact, she replaced her costume bra padding with her bridge chair on the last day and nobody noticed. Brawny.
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# ? Sep 1, 2023 23:43 |
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poo poo ain't moving, y'all watching it.
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# ? Sep 1, 2023 23:43 |
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Penitent posted:I'm surprised they didn't try to auction those off. They do look hilariously lovely in high quality though. Maybe they let one of the Enterprise's classrooms make them as a project.
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# ? Sep 2, 2023 00:26 |
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Oh, Q. Pid. Qpid. Vash returns. I didn't find her all that memorable in the first place, but she's back and she's making things uncomfortable for Picard. Then Q jumps in and sends everybody off to Sherwood forest and lots of broad silliness and clashing of swords ensues. I did enjoy how furious Worf was about it all. Very inconsequential, not quite as good or as funny as Barclay's return. I feel like this episode order for the last few days is giving me the good stuff, then immediately giving me an inferior version of the same thing. Good horror episode. poo poo horror episode. Good returning guest star. Bad returning guest star(s). And now I've realised there's only a clutch of episodes left this season and so far no sign of Lwaxana, oh no. Then The Drumhead. One where the show stops loving about, puts on a straight face and serves up a lovely special treat: a heavily performance based, paranoid courtroom drama. We've already had a fun jaunt into the courtroom this season with Devil's Due, but this was some magical telly. Jean Simmons bringing some TERRIFYING passion and fury to her role, after a deceptively pleasant introduction. Her transformation into a merciless, unhinged inquisitor was far more frightening than Geordi's rumpled blue glowy monster onesie. Stewart giving it full gravitas goes without saying really, he's on fire here. It's nice to just bumble into something with no expectations or knowledge and be impressed. And yet again, I cannot stress this enough, THE loving SCORE. The atonal nightmare strings when Simmons is losing her poo poo.
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# ? Sep 2, 2023 01:13 |
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You’re right you have a Lwaxana episode next. However it’s easily the best one and in my top 10 for the show period. It’s very good.
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# ? Sep 2, 2023 01:24 |
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Well, expectations raised then! I've mentioned this before, it's not like I dislike Majel Barrett, hell, she's literally THE VOICE OF THE SHOW. But Lwaxana's of that ilk of performance that really gets on my tits for whatever reason. The eye rolling, twittering "eccentric" deal I mostly attribute to showings by Meryl Streep or Julie Walters. Doesn't help that her appearances so far have been some of the most inane episodes.
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# ? Sep 2, 2023 01:43 |
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Animal-Mother posted:Brawny. The greatest animated gif ever? Possibly.
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# ? Sep 2, 2023 01:49 |
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Weirdly Lwaxana’s best episode is on DS9
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# ? Sep 2, 2023 01:51 |
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MuddyFunster posted:Then The Drumhead. One where the show stops loving about, puts on a straight face and serves up a lovely special treat: a heavily performance based, paranoid courtroom drama. We've already had a fun jaunt into the courtroom this season with Devil's Due, but this was some magical telly. Jean Simmons bringing some TERRIFYING passion and fury to her role, after a deceptively pleasant introduction. Her transformation into a merciless, unhinged inquisitor was far more frightening than Geordi's rumpled blue glowy monster onesie. Stewart giving it full gravitas goes without saying really, he's on fire here. It's nice to just bumble into something with no expectations or knowledge and be impressed. I once quoted Judge Aaron Satie at length (the whole "with the first link the chain is forged" bit) in a school paper on civil liberties. You wouldn't ever have known he was fictional unless you happened to notice that one of the source citations was a Star Trek episode.
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# ? Sep 2, 2023 02:12 |
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Sash! posted:The greatest animated gif ever? Somebody made a version of it using the remastered show so it was a higher resolution, did anybody save it? Or was it aatrek, bleh
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# ? Sep 2, 2023 04:35 |
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Tom Tucker posted:Weirdly Lwaxana’s best episode is on DS9 I haven't seen it but it's got to be real, real good to be better than "Half A Life."
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# ? Sep 2, 2023 04:53 |
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bennyfactor posted:Somebody made a version of it using the remastered show so it was a higher resolution, did anybody save it? Or was it aatrek, bleh It was
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# ? Sep 2, 2023 04:57 |
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Arivia posted:I haven't seen it but it's got to be real, real good to be better than "Half A Life." Oh yeah… ok one of the best. That was a drat good prime directive episode
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# ? Sep 2, 2023 06:43 |
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I think having slept on it, woken on it, walked about all day thinking about it, I really adore how Satie's given last word in court and there's no need for a big final rebuttal. Picard knows she's hosed it. She knows she's hosed it. Everybody knows. She opened her mouth, the real poo poo hiding beneath the pleasant exterior came out and everyone backed the gently caress away. The frightening thing is, I wonder if she expected her fervour to draw cheers? In a more receptive room, possibly? God drat, that episode is a pearl.
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# ? Sep 2, 2023 16:26 |
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The Drumhead is extremely good but has also been getting a little bit of retrospective side-eye lately for the 90s fantasy where a good speech at the right time and taking people's mask off is all you need to stop that kind of poison.
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# ? Sep 2, 2023 16:36 |
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The Drumhead is 'have you no shame sir' - the episode
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# ? Sep 2, 2023 17:13 |
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MikeJF posted:The Drumhead is extremely good but has also been getting a little bit of retrospective side-eye lately for the 90s fantasy where a good speech at the right time and taking people's mask off is all you need to stop that kind of poison. That's fair. Babylon 5's Night Watch is a much more accurate depiction of fascism worming its way into society. (I'm not sure if that's a spoiler or not? I can edit if so.) F_Shit_Fitzgerald fucked around with this message at 17:16 on Sep 2, 2023 |
# ? Sep 2, 2023 17:14 |
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I was reading some quotes from The Drumhead to remember some of the speeches mentioned here, and really, aside from the climax being a bit naive by today's standards, it's still a very effective message. It's also largely a prelude to what DS9 got into. No paradise is so perfect that you don't need to protect it -- but the difference is you're largely protecting it from internal threats, not external ones. It's like a great garden, you're never truly finished maintaining it. It's an ongoing process, and anyone who doesn't understand that arguably doesn't understand the virtues that got us here in the first place. You can also somewhat handwave the ending as being fundamentally optimistic about the best and brightest who would presumably be in charge of the courts in Starfleet, as opposed to the public at large, which would be much harder to believe.
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# ? Sep 2, 2023 17:26 |
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MikeJF posted:The Drumhead is extremely good but has also been getting a little bit of retrospective side-eye lately for the 90s fantasy where a good speech at the right time and taking people's mask off is all you need to stop that kind of poison. That's quite a bit of TNG in general, but yeah epitomized by that episode. Solving issues with The Picard Speech is clearly a liberal fantasy with no basis in reality. I am okay with it because some of the time TNG does feature a little more nuance than that, and some of the more overtly socialist utopian stuff is genuinely surprising when it crops up. It's more cringe when SNW tries to do the same thing.
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# ? Sep 2, 2023 17:57 |
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MikeJF posted:The Drumhead is extremely good but has also been getting a little bit of retrospective side-eye lately for the 90s fantasy where a good speech at the right time and taking people's mask off is all you need to stop that kind of poison. Yeah, I can completely understand that. The reality of it is often that the mask comes off and a load other people feel a lot more empowered to mask off too. It's acceptable now! She just said what we're all thinking! As I said, in a more receptive room I could imagine a lot of polite clapping, cultured bellows of "hear hear!", wine being swilled, etc.
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# ? Sep 2, 2023 18:15 |
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MuddyFunster posted:Yeah, I can completely understand that. The reality of it is often that the mask comes off and a load other people feel a lot more empowered to mask off too. It's acceptable now! She just said what we're all thinking! As I said, in a more receptive room I could imagine a lot of polite clapping, cultured bellows of "hear hear!", wine being swilled, etc.
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# ? Sep 2, 2023 18:55 |
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People act like the 'Have you no sense of decency?" thing never happened. It did! McCarthy got loving owned. He got owned so hard he "Died 3 years later, a broken man." The Drumhead isn't naive. I agree that it wouldn't happen in 2023 America, but that's because the political context has changed. The difference between then and now is the ability of the political elite to gatekeep has almost entirely collapsed. But the basic point remains: the witch hunts only happen because they are allowed to happen. Drumhead makes the point rather directly that the judge's trials are only happening with the consent of the Federation, as represented by the admiral/observers. Picard's speech - and baiting out the judge's worst impulses - doesn't change the judge's mind. But it does convince the Federation that she - and by extension they - have gone too far, they're skidding down a slippery slope. So the Federation withdraws their consent, and that's all that's needed for the judge's world to collapse around her.
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# ? Sep 2, 2023 20:41 |
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Yes and also I like the episode's statement that we constantly have to be vigilant for demagogues, which is very true You see how this progresses, where initially she is just questioning a guy who turns out to be a spy, and then later expands it to actual Starfleet officers, but thankfully Picard stands up and refuses to let it continue and that is part of what shuts it down.
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# ? Sep 2, 2023 20:54 |
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Precisely - fascism has historically always been a minority tolerated for gain by the center and feared by the left and there are moments when you can turn the lens back on it and win by hardening the majority at the top of the slippery slope. Sure it’s a bit Pollyanna-ish but it’s a 42 minute TV show so I allow it.
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# ? Sep 2, 2023 23:00 |
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Half A Life then. You all said it was good. It was good. Lwaxana's her usual twittery self at the beginning, but she very organically gains new dimensions through the course of the episode. Barrett gets to be passionate and angry and eventually stricken by self doubt, which is a rare thing for her character. The ending is crushingly matter-of-fact. But it's not entirely her show, it wouldn't work nearly as well without David Ogden Stiers' quiet dignity and general demeanour of sadness. Overall, the whole thing gave me a wobble, I came close, but The Offspring is still the only episode to evoke a full on tear fest. God drat though. The Host however, that evoked tears. Tears of laughter. It starts out fairly normal, like "Oh, Beverly gets her big slushy romance episode, just like Troi had ages back". It works a bit better, since Bev and her talk dark and handsome ("What is this strange secret he is hiding? Is he another Sexy Bad Boy?") have a lot more chemistry and genuinely look like they gently caress like rabbits at every given opportunity. So far, so good. Then it takes a loving BANANAS turn and doesn't look back. Jesus Christ, I am not even sure how I should process that ending.
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# ? Sep 3, 2023 00:38 |
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It's pretty messed up how Bev just fucks a guy who is chilling in Riker's body. I'm sure my man William T doesn't mind but christ almighty.
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# ? Sep 3, 2023 01:55 |
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TheDeadlyShoe posted:People act like the 'Have you no sense of decency?" thing never happened. It did! McCarthy got loving owned. He got owned so hard he "Died 3 years later, a broken man." Very much agree with this point - it's not that the '90s were a time of "liberal fantasy", it's that the times we're living in now are more hosed up. MuddyFunster posted:Half A Life then. You all said it was good. It was good. Lwaxana's her usual twittery self at the beginning, but she very organically gains new dimensions through the course of the episode. Barrett gets to be passionate and angry and eventually stricken by self doubt, which is a rare thing for her character. The ending is crushingly matter-of-fact. But it's not entirely her show, it wouldn't work nearly as well without David Ogden Stiers' quiet dignity and general demeanour of sadness. Overall, the whole thing gave me a wobble, I came close, but The Offspring is still the only episode to evoke a full on tear fest. God drat though. Yeah, David Odgen Stiers does excellent work in this episode; he's in the top tier of Star Trek guest stars as far as I'm concerned.
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# ? Sep 3, 2023 02:06 |
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DS9's "Paradise" doesn't have any appearances by Odo, Quark, Bashir, or Jake, which makes me wonder what the record is for the Star Trek episode with the fewest main cast members of its series in it. TNG I've noticed was pretty good at sneaking in a scene or two for cast members who didn't have a major role in that episode.
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# ? Sep 3, 2023 04:20 |
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# ? May 25, 2024 13:09 |
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Lord Hydronium posted:DS9's "Paradise" doesn't have any appearances by Odo, Quark, Bashir, or Jake, which makes me wonder what the record is for the Star Trek episode with the fewest main cast members of its series in it. TNG I've noticed was pretty good at sneaking in a scene or two for cast members who didn't have a major role in that episode. For TNG it’s probably either a Picard-centric episode like Family or Tapestry, or Shades of Grey if you only count the new scenes shot and not the stock footage from previous episodes.
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# ? Sep 3, 2023 05:21 |