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Atlas Hugged posted: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. As a warrior his standing would be significantly above that of the Klingon chef, although I doubt Alexander could take him in a fight.
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Sep 4, 2023 12:24
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I think it entirely possible that more than one of these things can be true at the same time. With a franchise like this, boiling it down to a trope feels needlessly reductive. We have been shown over and over again that a lone representative of a species in Starfleet often has a great deal of tension, both internally and externally, and that this tension is exacerbated when the individual isn't at peace with their place in their own society. See: Spock. His difficulties navigating the expectations of his Vulcan heritage while balancing Starfleet ideals are the very core of his character. Tendi is an inverse of this where she wants to create as much distance between herself and other Orions as she can, effectively hiding in Starfleet from who she is, but she actually shines when she embraces her background and puts those talents to good use. By the end of the (coincidentally DS9 themed) episode with the other Orion, she's started to accept that her heritage is as much a part of her as her love of science is. Alexander has walked both paths. Sure, he could live in the Federation and not be harassed, but he would never feel like he belonged. His joining the Empire isn't just him trying to get his father (obviously) to accept him as a Klingon and a warrior: Alexander is doing it for himself as well. He's just terrible at being a Klingon because his father was terrible at being a Klingon and worse at being a dad. But Alexander still recognizes that despite being a quarter human, he is a Klingon and he wants that part of himself to be a meaningful part of his identity. Also, I'm still not sure I buy the whole "once a warrior, always and just a warrior" thing because we're shown that Worf has had multiple jobs, sometimes military, sometimes diplomatic. His status in Klingon society has risen and fallen on multiple occasions and the highs and lows don't always line up with how much of a warrior he's being. To say that Alexander is now just stuck as a warrior and wouldn't be accepted doing something else once the war has ended feels wrong to me now that I've had time to think about it. Plus, a major part of DS9 is getting the Klingons to accept that their society has to change or they will be wiped out because it's rotted, not from corruption, but from stagnation. Atlas Hugged fucked around with this message at 12:41 on Sep 4, 2023 |
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Sep 4, 2023 12:35
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Mesk, the orion from Cincinnati, did the story better. (okay it's not quite the same story but there's a lot of the same elements)
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Sep 4, 2023 13:14
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The thing that gets me about Alexander in DS9 is that the character was like, ten. There was no reason to bring him back, they could have just said "Yeah, he's back on Earth and doing well at school, he just had his Bar Mitzvah, there's no reason for him to show up at a military outpost in the middle of a war." But instead they aged him up for no reason just so they could... what, establish that Worf is an even worse father than we thought and completely screwed this poor kid's life up?
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Sep 4, 2023 13:51
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It's not "doing warrior stuff" it's that there's a whole caste of warriors that are expected to act a certain way. The Klingon doctor in Enterprise, for example, or any Klingon whose parents were ever disappointed in them and forced them to become farmers or penal colonists (same thing)
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Sep 4, 2023 13:59
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MikeJF posted:Mesk, the orion from Cincinnati, did the story better. mesk, the orion from cincinnati, sounds like an snl character
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Sep 4, 2023 14:08
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Arivia posted:mesk, the orion from cincinnati, sounds like an snl character No it's actually from something funny
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Sep 4, 2023 14:10
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Taear posted:No it's actually from something funny so not these forums, then
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Sep 4, 2023 14:20
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Tonight I'm watching Wolf in the Fold and yikes is this an opening.
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Sep 4, 2023 14:59
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thotsky posted: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. Eh, there seem to be several different paths Klingon warriors can take. There are those who, when confronted with peace, lose their poo poo and turn allies into enemies. There's those who aren't so bloodthirsty but still lose themselves and become a shell of the people they once were. Then there are those who, while no longer having physical foes to conquer, find a metaphorical foe to vanquish, and while some of the more narrow minded klingons might sneer at them, those with any amount of introspection understand that such undertakings are still worthy endeavors.
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Sep 4, 2023 16:32
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Sir Lemming posted: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". Yeah, the episode spends so much time establishing that Kirk is not his usual self that once it's (well) established, there's nothing left except for Stocker to look clueless and for de-aged Kirk to swoop in and save the day. I do like Deadly Years, but saying that the courtroom drama drags on too long is completely fair.
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Sep 4, 2023 16:34
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Atlas Hugged posted:
Warriors are a caste of Klingon society, it's not your job description. Worf was raised by humans and joined Starfleet. He repeatedly rejects invitations to reclaim his birthright. He's simply not a warrior in the Klingon sense; lots of Klingons have trouble even accepting him as Klingon. If Alexander is serious about being a Warrior he will die as one. thotsky fucked around with this message at 22:35 on Sep 4, 2023 |
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Sep 4, 2023 20:13
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Isn't Klingon society basically in decline because they went from having a nuanced society to focusing everything on combat and honour? I think TNG had a Klingon scientist who just wanted to do some engineering, but she kept having to deal with getting looked down on for not fighting.
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Sep 4, 2023 20:22
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BonHair posted:Isn't Klingon society basically in decline because they went from having a nuanced society to focusing everything on combat and honour? I think TNG had a Klingon scientist who just wanted to do some engineering, but she kept having to deal with getting looked down on for not fighting.  Despite any canon to the contrary, I posit this as the only possible way that Klingons could have developed warp technology.
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Sep 4, 2023 20:27
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Tunicate posted:
I think canon is they got invaded by the Hur'q (sp?) and grabbed all their warp drives after driving them off. Or maybe that's from STO.
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Sep 4, 2023 22:49
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Oh no, Geordi is acting like he got laid, something's not right. The Mind's Eye was a good, solid one. Didn't knock my socks off, but it didn't annoy me, didn't bore me. Just a decently written, nicely tense brainwashing conspiracy thriller where that tension lies not in the "who" or "how", but in the ticking clock detective work that will stop the Romulan plot coming to fruition. Complaints? No, not really, beyond the opening teasing the horrifying possibility of a Risa episode starring Geordi, which is a HELLISH idea. Also hellish, In Theory, with its cutesy "Data tries dating" main plot, offers up one of the more sudden and lingering horrors once the b-plot ("The Mysterious Case of Things Getting Moved About a Bit") takes hold. Oh, I'd seen that image somewhere before, absolutely, the woman phased through the floor. I wasn't aware of the offscreen death cry or the thin little trickle of blood coming out of her nose. Thanks show, that'll be living in my head for a while! Sitting right alongside the transporter accident from TMP and the TOS episode where the woman gets turned into a little chalky cube and crushed into dust. The worst thing is imagining what the deck below looks like, yeesh. Oh, the rest of it is amiable enough. It's otherwise forgettable, honestly.
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Sep 5, 2023 00:17
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MuddyFunster posted:Oh no, Geordi is acting like he got laid, something's not right. The Mind's Eye was a good, solid one. Didn't knock my socks off, but it didn't annoy me, didn't bore me. Just a decently written, nicely tense brainwashing conspiracy thriller where that tension lies not in the "who" or "how", but in the ticking clock detective work that will stop the Romulan plot coming to fruition. Complaints? No, not really, beyond the opening teasing the horrifying possibility of a Risa episode starring Geordi, which is a HELLISH idea. I'm always interested to hear first-timers' reactions to this episode. There's a subtle something in The Mind's Eye that most people seem to miss. (It seemed obvious to me when I saw the episode in first run, but everyone thought I was crazy until the last few seconds of the season finale proved me right.)
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Sep 5, 2023 00:28
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Wolf in the Fold wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be from the premise. Though the premise itself is loving wow. Scotty has a concussion because of sloppy work by women in engineering, so McCoy has taken him to a pleasure planet so he won't start resenting women. He then becomes the prime suspect in a murder that eventually leads to the destruction of the entity we knew as Jack the Ripper. Sure, ok. It would be very easy for an episode like this to forget that it's Star Trek. The whole thing could have been a parlor room mystery happening to star the crew of the Enterprise, but the show repeatedly went back to the ship and the Federation's technology to solve the conflict. I really appreciate when the show is just absolutely earnest in the face of a ridiculous premise like this. No, this isn't supposed to be silly. Kirk is going to 100% take a fear-vampire, energy-cloud serial killer at face value and just deal with it on those merits. loving yikes though the comments about women here. "They scare more easily than men and fear more deeply." Apparently. Cash bail has been eliminated, but surely after being found with a murder weapon in his hand, they'd have Scotty in a cell or something. And after the second you'd think they'd just keep women away from him to be safe. I know the plot requires it, but I found that harder to believe than that Jack the Ripper was a space monster. And finally, the ending is loving insane. Everyone is high, so Kirk realizes that the ship can't leave the pleasure planet for six hours, plenty of time for him to hit the local brothel. Except, everyone is too high to go with him aside from Spock and Kirk can't convince Spock to accompany him, so he doesn't bother to go at all. Ah, Star Trek. Kirk has killed a lot of vampire like creatures at this point. The guy feels like a regular slayer. Frankly he does it so often that I'm surprised it never became a motion picture plot. Like honestly if I was going to make a TOS-style feature film, it'd be about a space entity that absorbed life essence through some convoluted means and had a connection to legends from various Federation member planets. I told my friend about this episode and he wanted to know if Federation policy was only to prevent forming resentment against women or if the policy extended to more categories of people, like ethnicities and nationalities. If a guy from Peru drops a box of crystals on your toe, do they take you to Machu Picchu to teach you to appreciate Peruvian heritage so you don't resent the culture?
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Sep 5, 2023 00:34
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Technowolf posted:I think canon is they got invaded by the Hur'q (sp?) and grabbed all their warp drives after driving them off. The Hur'q are proper canon but you don't get a lot about them. They're from the gamma quadrant and their invasion was horrible (that part is from enterprise). It's weird, they kinda drop what should be a HUGE development just randomly in the episode Sword of Kahless. That said Star Trek is really good at doing things that should be super meaningful and it being just a random whim for that one episode
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Sep 5, 2023 01:01
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MuddyFunster posted:Oh no, Geordi is acting like he got laid, something's not right.  I don't really have a comment about your reaction; I just thought that starting off with that was hilarious.
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Sep 5, 2023 01:32
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Powered Descent posted:I'm always interested to hear first-timers' reactions to this episode. There's a subtle something in The Mind's Eye that most people seem to miss. (It seemed obvious to me when I saw the episode in first run, but everyone thought I was crazy until the last few seconds of the season finale proved me right.) There was a shadowy Romulan woman. They made a big point of keeping the light off her to the point I was like, "hang on a moment."
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Sep 5, 2023 01:44
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MuddyFunster posted:There was a shadowy Romulan woman. They made a big point of keeping the light off her to the point I was like, "hang on a moment." I neither confirm nor deny that you're on the track of what I meant. Go watch Redemption first.
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Sep 5, 2023 01:57
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Tonight, Kirk, Uhura and Chekov have been transported by unknown means to some kind of gladiatorial arena. This episode can't possibly be more ridiculous than the last one.
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Sep 5, 2023 13:35
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TOS can always be more ridiculous.
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Sep 5, 2023 13:49
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This episode opens with what appears to be a sexual assault on Uhura followed by Chekov experiencing some trans panic. Sigh. This was followed by "A Piece of the Action". More energy vampires please. At least those episodes are recognizably Star Trek. Atlas Hugged fucked around with this message at 15:33 on Sep 5, 2023 |
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Sep 5, 2023 14:01
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If you don't like A Piece Of The Action get off my bridge
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Sep 5, 2023 18:01
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Sure thing, which door is the turbolift again? The novelty wears off 5 minutes in and then it's just a dull retread of gangster tropes. I dunno, it seemed a lot more fun when I was a kid and hadn't watched a lot of other stuff. The Robin Hood TNG episode doesn't do much for me these days either. Like it has a few good lines & moments, but it's not really funny or clever enough to justify the whole hour. It was a fun diversion when they had nothing better to air that week.
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Sep 5, 2023 18:37
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Spock's Brain is still my favorite "funny" TOS episode, but A Piece of the Action is pretty good, if a bit too 'cute' in places. It's one of those episodes where Shatner hamming it up kinda fits with the plot (another example: The Enterprise Incident).
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Sep 5, 2023 18:44
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My hot take - I love Rascals. It’s so loving absurd the Ferengi somehow manage to take over the Federation Flagship and it just so happens to be the day the captain got turned into a child. You’ve got Picard yelling at the computer in the school room and throwing a tantrum and then you’ve got straight up Home Alone nonsense it’s just perfect. It finds that perfect line between mediocre and terrible where the quality becomes amazing again.
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Sep 5, 2023 23:08
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I think I would have liked A Piece of the Action more had it not followed Gamesters and Wolf in the Fold. To the show's credit, Trouble with Tribbles breaks up Wolf and Gamesters but I skipped it last night as I've seen that episode several times and I'm trying to stick to new episodes so that I can say I've seen them all. It's just been a real rough run of weird concepts that don't quite work, very slow paces, extreme misogyny, and gimmicks. I don't think I'd actually be able to recommend this show to anyone.
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Sep 6, 2023 00:35
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Yeah, season 2 got experimental with a lot of its concepts. Sometimes it worked (Mirror, Mirror; The Doomsday Machine) and sometimes it didn't as much (Gamesters, Wolf in the Fold). Overall, it's a pretty good season but not as good as the first, and the episode quality begins to level off roughly halfway through.
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Sep 6, 2023 00:37
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Atlas Hugged posted:a real rough run of weird concepts that don't quite work, very slow paces, extreme misogyny, and gimmicks. Good thing it's too long because I like the current thread title
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Sep 6, 2023 00:58
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Redemption Part 1: Oh, okay, more fairly standard Klingon political wranglings, which at this point, I've always got time for, especially if Tony Todd's involved again. Unfortunately, this one introduces the Duras sisters and their stupid boob windows. Then there's comical little Terry* Duras with his goofy teeth and short stature, what a dweeb. Gowron is still a righteous dude. So, it all builds to a head, Worf leaves Starfleet, the Enterprise buggers off, shadowy Romulan lady steps out of the shadows and... Huh. As season ending cliffhangers go, very weird. Still, beats the gently caress out of Shades of Grey. Redemption Part 2: Yes, that pulls together a lot of scattered running plotlines really nicely and in a way that feels genuinely satisfying. I am a bit in two minds about Sela**. On the downside, I feel it adds an unpleasantly bitter aftertaste to Yesteday's Enterprise. On the upside, hey, more opportunities for Denise Crosby to appear! Data's little command side story fantastically ended without his naysaying first officer doing some corny "Awww shucks, I guess I was wrong about you sir!" type speech. Yeah, that was a lot of stuff and I was a bit on the fence at the midpoint, but the second half swooped in and buttoned it so neatly. Season 4 thoughts? Continues the general quality of the third, some real gems, Drumhead and Remember Me in particular stick out. A few scattered crap ones here and there, but they were entertainingly so. Beverly's worm man romance was a particular "WHAT AM I WATCHING!?" highlight, the more seriously it took itself, the funnier it got. Geordie went full creeper and I'm still absolutely furious that Leah Brahms had to apologise to him because? Reasons? Lwaxana won me over. It was some Star Trek alright! *he's called Terry because I cannot be arsed to look up how his actual name is spelt, it begins with a T and he looks like a Terry anyway **did look this up
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Sep 6, 2023 01:30
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MuddyFunster posted:Data's little command side story fantastically ended without his naysaying first officer doing some corny "Awww shucks, I guess I was wrong about you sir!" type speech. Fun fact: Data's XO was played by Timothy Carhart. You might know Timothy Carhart as "the stiff" from the original Ghostbusters.
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Sep 6, 2023 01:49
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MuddyFunster posted:Redemption Part 1: Oh, okay, more fairly standard Klingon political wranglings, which at this point, I've always got time for, especially if Tony Todd's involved again. Unfortunately, this one introduces the Duras sisters and their stupid boob windows. Then there's comical little Terry* Duras with his goofy teeth and short stature, what a dweeb. Gowron is still a righteous dude. So, it all builds to a head, Worf leaves Starfleet, the Enterprise buggers off, shadowy Romulan lady steps out of the shadows and... Huh. As season ending cliffhangers go, very weird. Still, beats the gently caress out of Shades of Grey. The thing I was alluding to from The Mind's Eye is, of course, Sela. We never saw the shadowy Romulan woman's face, and there was nothing in the credits, but to me it was so freaking obviously Tasha Yar's voice. Like I was straight-up wondering why Geordi didn't recognize it. (Although in fairness, from Geordi's standpoint he hadn't seen her in three years, and I had seen some Season 1 reruns not too long ago.)
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Sep 6, 2023 01:56
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Tom Tucker posted:My hot take - I love Rascals. It’s so loving absurd the Ferengi somehow manage to take over the Federation Flagship and it just so happens to be the day the captain got turned into a child. You’ve got Picard yelling at the computer in the school room and throwing a tantrum and then you’ve got straight up Home Alone nonsense it’s just perfect. It finds that perfect line between mediocre and terrible where the quality becomes amazing again. It's also got Ro going "I grew up in a concentration camp gently caress childhood" to "I like coloring"
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Sep 6, 2023 07:43
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V-Men posted:It's also got Ro going "I grew up in a concentration camp gently caress childhood" to "I like coloring" Kid Guinan and Kid Ro are such a great pairing I didn't want it to end
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Sep 6, 2023 08:43
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McSpanky posted:Kid Guinan and Kid Ro are such a great pairing I didn't want it to end It's the most C-plot thing but it's such a wonderful addition of depth to Ro's character
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Sep 6, 2023 09:12
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Powered Descent posted:The thing I was alluding to from The Mind's Eye is, of course, Sela. We never saw the shadowy Romulan woman's face, and there was nothing in the credits, but to me it was so freaking obviously Tasha Yar's voice. Like I was straight-up wondering why Geordi didn't recognize it. (Although in fairness, from Geordi's standpoint he hadn't seen her in three years, and I had seen some Season 1 reruns not too long ago.) Yeah, I didn't guess the voice. It's a good reveal, but I could imagine it going down like a lead balloon for a casual viewer. It's got none of the immediate urgency of Best of Both Worlds' cliffhanger, but on the other hand, I'm happy they didn't try to (hur hur) replicate that and went for something waaaaaaay different. A very strange bit of intrigue.
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Sep 6, 2023 13:33
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A Private Little War.  Well that was bleak. I don't get why after Kirk had the recorded confession of the Klingon he didn't leave and report that they had broken the treaty.
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Sep 6, 2023 15:36
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