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Family still has the plot with Worf's parents coming onboard the Enterprise though, right? So you get a lot of the main cast there.
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Sep 3, 2023 05:26
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Boxturret posted:Family still has the plot with Worf's parents coming onboard the Enterprise though, right? So you get a lot of the main cast there. I forgot that was in the episode. Worf, Geordi (iirc?), and Troi. O’Brien and Guinan if you’re counting guest stars. No Data? Picard and Riker are apparently in every episode according to Memory Alpha. Big Mean Jerk fucked around with this message at 05:33 on Sep 3, 2023 |
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Sep 3, 2023 05:31
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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. Carbon Creek is missing everyone except T'Pol, Archer, and Trip.
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Sep 3, 2023 06:53
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On with DS9 season 2: 2-16, Shadowplay: Odo and Dax find a planet with a lone village of people who wear way too much poo poo on them, they're more beads and drapes and cloaks than men. Turns out they're holograms. Feels like very much a TNG episode written for Data instead of Odo, but René Auberjonois puts the good work in. The episode also finds time to drop in Bareil and my God could that man be less interesting. It's weird, the part has potential, a religious leader in a fairly orthodox society who is so modern that he even offends Kira with it. But none of that gets through in the performance. We also find time to introduce the idea that Jake doesn't want to be in Starfleet. It's nuts how much better DS9 handles their main kid character than TNG did. Kid characters in TV series bear some interesting scrutiny, because I think writers and producers, at least in the 80s/90s had a fundamental misunderstanding of how kid characters were perceived. It's like they thought "let's put in a kid who is smart and wise and occasionally runs rings around the adults, the kids watching will love that and wish they were them!", while I think actual viewing kids watched these characters with a kind of hostility. Taking time away from watching their actual favorite characters, circumstances bending around letting the kid characters be the hero. Jake Sisko was portrayed as a far more average kid with a relatively average homelife and average worries, and was a much better and more real character for it. 2-17, Playing God: A Trill applying to become a symbiont candidate comes to the station to get evaluated by Dax. My God what a terrible snooze of an episode. The B plot of a burgeoning universe growing inside the station doesn't help. Best part of it is the creepy Cardassian voles some talented prop maker created for the episode. edit: and the singing Klingon chef again! Can't forget about him. 2-18, Profit and Loss: A ship with a Cardassian teacher and her two students narrowly makes it to the station, turns out they're activists being pursued by the Cardassian military. Quark knows the lady and seeks to reignite their old love affair. He does this of course with the usual horny and manipulative Ferengi tactics, but it's still very fun watching a pair of actors slathered in rubber prosthetics act out their soap opera. Still a pretty important episode to watch, since it starts to reveal more about Garak. On a first watch, it was still totally unclear where Garak's loyalties lay, and he very much seems to be selling out the Cardassian "terrorists" to the government in exchange for a possible pardon - until it turns out he isn't. I love the weird body language in this scene where he shows up at ops to talk to Sisko. Not sure if the gif conveys it, but the slow, stork-like walk with hands perfectly hanging down, polite grin plastered on his face, he's like a predator trying not to spook his prey:  And when Sisko turns down the suggestion to hand the Cardassians over to his government, Garak's suggestion that Sisko stop by his shop to try our some suits feels like an unsubtle threat. The episode does end a little ridiculously, though. Despite the Bajoran provisional government agreeing to a prisoner exchange, Odo just frees the Cardassians after Quark begs him "out of a sense of justice", Garak vaporizes a Cardassian Gul on the station, and we see no follow-up to any of this. Ah well. davidspackage fucked around with this message at 11:29 on Sep 3, 2023 |
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Sep 3, 2023 10:55
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DS9 handles nepobabies so well that it even makes a fair attempt at redeeming Alexander. It leans into his lovely, lovely, awful father and hosed up upbringing; leans into the absurdity of the character; and actually has him find a place in Klingon society.
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Sep 3, 2023 11:09
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Tom Tucker posted: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. Yeah, you've basically nailed why I find The Drumhead to be a pretty good episode even though I'm usually wildly turned off by West Wing-ish fantasylands. TNG's world is at least several steps back along the right (left? lmao) path compared to ours, so it'd be a little ridiculous for any given room to have a bunch of nascent fascists waiting to cheer on Satie. Star Trek is explicitly a utopian society and I tend to think it goes the farthest wrong when it looks too much like modern-day America. Satie blows herself up because the Federation is still a society where the vast majority of people agree with and understand Picard's message, and the core conflict (which is obviously a little silly but whatever) is that Picard is the only one who clearly sees what she's doing. Even Worf is basically in tune once the spell is broken. That wasn't true of even 90s America, but that's fine since Star Trek isn't portraying 90s America. edit- basically what I'm saying is that one of Star Trek's biggest strengths is that it's portraying a world where everyone cheers Picard on and also that it's pretty explicitly saying that that is not our world Paradoxish fucked around with this message at 13:19 on Sep 3, 2023 |
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Sep 3, 2023 13:09
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The Deadly Years is a slow episode, but it does an actual call back to The Corbomite Maneuver which is neat to see. I kind of want an episode of Trek where they're dealing with a phenomenon and they go through the logs of other starships that went through something similar to look for a solution. Ten years ago I might have asked if the episode was ageist, but given what Congress looks like these days it's a good lesson on learning when to say it's time to step aside.
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Sep 3, 2023 13:31
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Paradoxish posted:Yeah, you've basically nailed why I find The Drumhead to be a pretty good episode even though I'm usually wildly turned off by West Wing-ish fantasylands. TNG's world is at least several steps back along the right (left? lmao) path compared to ours, so it'd be a little ridiculous for any given room to have a bunch of nascent fascists waiting to cheer on Satie. Star Trek is explicitly a utopian society and I tend to think it goes the farthest wrong when it looks too much like modern-day America. This is a great point - the West Wing feels absurd because it’s supposed to basically be our world where we know a speech doesn’t fix a problem, but Star Trek imagines a world where it could. But even there they still wrestle with issues that mirror our own.
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Sep 3, 2023 14:19
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Tom Tucker posted: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. Except, of course, in the case of Germany, where fascism was tolerated for gain by the KPD, and then the USSR.
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Sep 3, 2023 16:08
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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. TOS is weird for only really having 3 main cast members, but All Our Yesterdays only has Kirk, Spock and McCoy as well as few voiceovers from Scotty and no interior shots of the Enterprise.
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Sep 3, 2023 18:00
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Atlas Hugged posted:The Deadly Years is a slow episode, but it does an actual call back to The Corbomite Maneuver which is neat to see. I kind of want an episode of Trek where they're dealing with a phenomenon and they go through the logs of other starships that went through something similar to look for a solution. I don't know if this is an unpopular opinion or not: I like The Deadly Years. Shatner's acting as an old man, I think, pretty accurately captures 'grumpy old man'. It's not a perfect episode; the competency hearing takes up way too much time, and Stocker mainly exists as something of an antagonist (and to sit and look clueless as they're being attacked). It's not City on the Edge of Forever or All My Yesterdays but it's a good episode.
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Sep 3, 2023 19:21
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Paradoxish posted:Yeah, you've basically nailed why I find The Drumhead to be a pretty good episode even though I'm usually wildly turned off by West Wing-ish fantasylands. TNG's world is at least several steps back along the right (left? lmao) path compared to ours, so it'd be a little ridiculous for any given room to have a bunch of nascent fascists waiting to cheer on Satie. Star Trek is explicitly a utopian society and I tend to think it goes the farthest wrong when it looks too much like modern-day America.
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Sep 3, 2023 19:50
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I've mentioned this before, but the makeup effects in Deadly Years are so much better than any of the early attempts to do the same in TNG where they all end up looking like... Uh, whatever the gently caress this is. They'd get it a bit better in Future Imperfect, just throwing in a shock of grey here, a line there. Obviously they're not all meant to be THAT old there, but still.
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Sep 3, 2023 19:56
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The makeup that Admiral has is some of the worst I've ever seen on TV
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Sep 3, 2023 19:58
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That's just what the guy looks like, it was the younger version that was all makeup.
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Sep 3, 2023 20:03
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MuddyFunster posted:I've mentioned this before, but the makeup effects in Deadly Years are so much better than any of the early attempts to do the same in TNG where they all end up looking like... Uh, whatever the gently caress this is. Part of it is also the performance accentuating the awful makeup though. The guy playing the Admiral acted like he’d never seen an old person in real life before and had only been told folk tales of how they moved and acted.
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Sep 3, 2023 20:26
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Atlas Hugged posted:DS9 handles nepobabies so well that it even makes a fair attempt at redeeming Alexander. It leans into his lovely, lovely, awful father and hosed up upbringing; leans into the absurdity of the character; and actually has him find a place in Klingon society. wtf Alexander's arc is one of the worst and most depressing turns in DS9. He clearly does not fit into Klingon society at all and ends up as a ship's clown trying to find some way to make his father love and accept him, it's an absolutely tragic note for his character to finish on
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Sep 3, 2023 22:28
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When they make Bashir old in that episode that's inside his head they won an Emmy for makeup But it's basically the same as that admiral. Might even be the same people?
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Sep 3, 2023 23:33
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No Dignity posted:wtf Alexander's arc is one of the worst and most depressing turns in DS9. He clearly does not fit into Klingon society at all and ends up as a ship's clown trying to find some way to make his father love and accept him, it's an absolutely tragic note for his character to finish on I legitimately don't really understand how anybody could see DS9's version of Alexander as any kind of positive - Firstborn is the only Alexander episode I can ever remember being any good and DS9 completely ruins it.
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Sep 4, 2023 02:51
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I kind of read Alex's fate in DS9 as really the best he could get. He's forever going to be treated as the village idiot by Klingon standards, but he's the one Klingons actually warm up to and enjoy keeping around. Worf is too self-serious to ever be tolerated for more than forty-minute chunks by their people. Alex is a clown, but he's better company among Klingons than Worf could ever be. He'll never get operas about him, but he's never gonna be lonely again.
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Sep 4, 2023 03:07
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Plus, the war isn't gonna last forever. Presumably, he could retire from his military service at some point after the fighting ends, and move on from there, hopefully with more self-confidence (such as it is) and direction, now that he, maybe, got the urge to prove anything, to himself or his father, out of his system. He's a member of the House of Martok now, after all, I'm sure there'd be plenty of opportunities for him, with some help from the head of the family.
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Sep 4, 2023 04:40
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DS9 ends with his dad being ambassador to the Chancellor, who Alexander served under in the war for a time. That's a solid resume in Klingon society. He's a lovely, lousy character in general, but he got as good of an ending as he could have hoped for.
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Sep 4, 2023 04:57
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Atlas Hugged posted:DS9 ends with his dad being ambassador to the Chancellor, who Alexander served under in the war for a time. That's a solid resume in Klingon society. And if he wanted, he could still go back to Earth, or to any other Human world, and get at the very least the same acceptance and opportunity that Worf did.
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Sep 4, 2023 05:04
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Powered Descent posted:And if he wanted, he could still go back to Earth, or to any other Human world, and get at the very least the same acceptance and opportunity that Worf did. He should probably not take up soccer though.
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Sep 4, 2023 05:48
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mllaneza posted:He should probably not take up soccer though. 
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Sep 4, 2023 06:05
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Big Mean Jerk posted:Part of it is also the performance accentuating the awful makeup though. The guy playing the Admiral acted like he’d never seen an old person in real life before and had only been told folk tales of how they moved and acted. Old People Acting is an art that has barely seen improvement over the past 30 years. Most actors still do way too much, shaking their head like they have a neural condition, smacking their lips constantly, putting on a deeply strained voice.
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Sep 4, 2023 06:31
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davidspackage posted:Old People Acting is an art that has barely seen improvement over the past 30 years. Most actors still do way too much, shaking their head like they have a neural condition, smacking their lips constantly, putting on a deeply strained voice. on the other hand, there's a very easy new model in mitch mcconnell
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Sep 4, 2023 06:54
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I didn't exactly hate the acting in The Deadly Years. It's just kind of a dull episode that drags on way too long. The competency hearing felt like a retread of The Doomsday Machine with the commodore being a benevolent fool rather than a suicidal maniac.
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Sep 4, 2023 07:18
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davidspackage posted:Old People Acting is an art that has barely seen improvement over the past 30 years. Most actors still do way too much, shaking their head like they have a neural condition, smacking their lips constantly, putting on a deeply strained voice. I'm taking it you didn't watch Picard?
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Sep 4, 2023 07:29
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BonHair posted:I'm taking it you didn't watch Picard? Not much of it, are you referring to Patrick Stewart himself? Cause he's got more of a fragile, quavering voice now. Most actors portaying old people tend to do "I lost my voice yelling at the concert last night, and now I have to push to make any sound come out."
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Sep 4, 2023 08:31
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Atlas Hugged posted:I didn't exactly hate the acting in The Deadly Years. It's just kind of a dull episode that drags on way too long. The competency hearing felt like a retread of The Doomsday Machine with the commodore being a benevolent fool rather than a suicidal maniac. The dramatic tension is all screwed up because we, and the characters, already know exactly what's happening and why it undeniably makes Kirk temporarily incompetent. It was a really weird choice for them to try to make that into a courtroom drama. There actually has to be an interesting argument for that to work, not just "no u".
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Sep 4, 2023 08:48
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Sep 4, 2023 09:24
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davidspackage posted:Not much of it, are you referring to Patrick Stewart himself? Cause he's got more of a fragile, quavering voice now. Most actors portaying old people tend to do "I lost my voice yelling at the concert last night, and now I have to push to make any sound come out." Yeah, that was what I was going for, but I hear what you're saying. It's just very jarring with action Picard sounding like a man who is gonna break his hip if anyone looks at it.
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Sep 4, 2023 09:54
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Yeah, that's what made the show harder for me to watch. Stewart always had such an orator's compelling voice. Time is the fire in which we burn and all, but drat. Had the show been better, I could've dealt with it. 
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Sep 4, 2023 10:12
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Aoi posted:Plus, the war isn't gonna last forever. Presumably, he could retire from his military service at some point after the fighting ends, and move on from there. I, uh, don't think that's how Klingon society works
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Sep 4, 2023 10:51
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Soul Dentist posted:I, uh, don't think that's how Klingon society works I mean, but it is. We've seen enough of Klingon society to know that there are other professions than just crewman on a Bird of Prey. DS9 has that chef who will slay your hunger and boredom with grak and opera. Then there's the lawyer who doesn't even care about justice; he just wants to meet you in his battlefield of choice: the courtroom. Alexander can absolutely go on to do something else and no one will ever get to say he's a coward who dishonored himself when the Empire needed him.
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Sep 4, 2023 11:06
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Alexander seems like a very sweet and sensitive young man and it's hard to see him fitting into anywhere depicted in klingon society
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Sep 4, 2023 11:08
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Atlas Hugged posted:I mean, but it is. We've seen enough of Klingon society to know that there are other professions than just crewman on a Bird of Prey. DS9 has that chef who will slay your hunger and boredom with grak and opera. Then there's the lawyer who doesn't even care about justice; he just wants to meet you in his battlefield of choice: the courtroom. Alexander can absolutely go on to do something else and no one will ever get to say he's a coward who dishonored himself when the Empire needed him. If you're a warrior you're a warrior until death. Retirement, or dying of old age, is portrayed as the worst possible fate, and a grave dishonor, multiple times across the various shows. The lawyer, cook and scientist lady are looked down upon in Klingon society, even if some of them have managed to find some honor in what they do.
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Sep 4, 2023 11:43
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Well gently caress it then. He gets to be a Klingon good luck charm for the rest of his life, and while that may not come with the highest standing, he is at the very least accepted.
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Sep 4, 2023 11:46
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He was always portrayed as far more easygoing and assimilated into Federation society than Worf and he only joined the Klingon armed forces to try and gain his negligent father's love and approval, like that arc is just a tragedy for him And the subtext of 'sensitive young man joins a traditionally masculine institution to try and prove himself to disapproving family' feels so obvious I didn't realise it needed spelling out
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Sep 4, 2023 11:59
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