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Pulaski is a much better character than Crusher and its because they pretty much directly imported her from TOS, a show where characters (all three of them) were allowed to get on each other's nerves and have sharply contrasting attitudes and beliefs. She is pretty much one-note and a bit of a bitch, but that still puts her way ahead of Crusher, who doesn't appear to have any attitudes or beliefs at all beyond a general desire to do doctorly poo poo. I would much rather have had six seasons of Pulaski. King Possum III posted:Diana Muldaur, the actress who played Dr. Katherine Pulaski, didn't get along very well with the rest of the cast of TNG. The whole reason Muldaur was on the show to begin with was that McFadden apparently got molested by some producer or other (Roddenberry's sleazy lawyer, possibly) and said "gently caress this". Patrick Stewart among others was pretty mad about this and campaigned hard to bring her back. This is part of why I think Pulaski's character works, she feels like a really strong-minded individual who just doesn't want to play along with the rest of the crew and there's nothing forced about that feeling.
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Jul 5, 2016 14:42
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FilthyImp posted:Some of those characters profiles... "she treats Picard and Number One like they're saints"? What the hell Roddenberry. Because she comes from Planet Rape, she behaves like a slavish third worlder
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Jul 7, 2016 15:27
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Gammatron 64 posted:It was a little ahead of its time in that it was a serialized TV show in the age before Netflix. In fact, I'm pretty sure that nobody realized DS9 was good until Netflix became a thing. Voyager briefly had higher ratings than DS9 when it launched, but after that start, which wasn't as highly rated as DS9's had been, they fell off a cliff, much like DS9 (and Enterprise for that matter) did.
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Jul 11, 2016 19:56
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Gammatron 64 posted:Is it opposite day today? Did I wander into CineD by mistake? TMP is a lot better than any of the TNG or nutrek movies, or for that matter Search for Spock or Final Frontier.
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Jul 12, 2016 02:38
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:By the way, my assessment is that the TMP uniforms are pretty cool and they actually make a pass at being somewhat utilitarian. The TMP uniforms have great lines, but the color scheme is too washed out. I still like them a lot better than the uniforms from the rest of the movies though.
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Jul 12, 2016 23:22
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:I watched The Lights of Zetar tonight for the first time in like ten years and holy poo poo was that a miserable slog. This episode used to scare the poo poo out of me when I was a kid, especially the scenes on Memory Alpha. I do think the gargling noises and technicolor face is a good effect. I still feel the first half of the episode is a pretty effective slow build horror story that falls apart once they find out what's going on. The plot would probably have been better served by either not revealing the Lights' true nature, so they're just an inscrutable, must-be-destroyed force like the doomsday machine, amoeba from Immunity Syndrome, etc.; or alternatively, if it did reveal that they're just talky godlike energy beings trying to find some way to keep everyone happy. The Lights are assholes, but if you're going to the trouble of making them aliens that can be talked to and reasoned with, then what's the point in giving them such a convoluted motivation as "we exist as pure energy and have abandoned physical forms, except this lady's, hers is pretty hot I guess, let's just erase her mind and take it. No we aren't prepared to discuss this or find someone else to live inside." And these guys can't take ten minutes in a pressure chamber? Weak rear end poo poo for a godlike energy being if you ask me. Also Scotty's crush on Lt Might Die is terrifically boring (contrast Who Mourns for Adonais) because there's no emotional resonance to getting your girlfriend stolen from you by a light show. So the basic concept is okay, but strictly turd season otherwise.
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Jul 13, 2016 11:00
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This show may turn out to be poo poo, in fact it's a pretty good bet that it will, but it's not going to be because the ship is ugly and the effects are cheap. It's loving Star Trek we're talking about here. "This doesn't look like real alien at all and further more a dude clearly made that poo poo out of styrofoam in his garage, 0/10 episode" --Nobody, 2016
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Jul 24, 2016 02:08
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Subyng posted:Kind of a strange response. It's not as if sci fi portraying orbital mechanics requires the audience to start doing calculations in their heads. You simply present it to the audience as is. "The ship has no power, we're stuck in orbit Captain" is enough for the audience, for example. "We're stuck in orbit" is a boring, dry crisis with no immediacy. Yeah it is bad, but it doesn't inject the same sort of sudden tension that "oh poo poo the ship broke and now we are going to crash and explode" does. It could potentially be interesting, but over the timescale of a single tv episode or even a two hour movie it doesn't really convince. It's the same kind of crisis as being stuck on a desert island, but what you want for a good tv episode is for that kind of conflict to be in the background while the main danger is that you're stuck on a desert island with a tribe of cannibals. Or a giant gorilla or smoke monster or vengeful ancient god alien or whatever.
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Jul 27, 2016 20:52
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Subyng posted:Yes, which is why I did not suggest transplanting the crisis of "the ship is crashing" with "ship stuck in orbit", but "trapped in space" is definitely a Space Thing that could be used to create an interesting conflict. Saying "X would be boring" is just a lack of creativity. "Stuck on a bus" is boring, "stuck on a bus because you can go under 40mph or it explodes" is an entire movie. This is basically exactly what I just said: being stuck in orbit makes a good background problem for a threat to be set against, but it isn't a good immediate threat in itself because the threat it poses is distant and impersonal. Look at The Naked Time and tell me if it would be as effectual if instead of spiraling down towards the planet as a result of Lt Irish's drunken shenanigans, they were just stuck in orbit around it for an indefinite amount of time.
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Jul 27, 2016 23:37
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^^^there isn't anything terribly wrong with that, it's one more real character than TOS had for example. It's just that even the interesting characters on Ent are dire and boring 90% of the time. Dirty posted:I'm not sure how to stretch the analogy further to say that the pet was not getting the ratings it needed to. I think season 4 was the lowest rated of them all. All the post TNG shows had this same trend of worse ratings as they went on, the real problem was that Enterprise had bad ratings to start with.
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Jul 29, 2016 23:40
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They basically gave up trying to bring in new viewers by making easily accessible tv that you didn't need to watch a whole bunch of other poo poo to even comprehend at the same time as they began to alienate the people who were already watching by rehashing increasingly tired bullshit and a parasitic relationship with the fandom and the continuity.
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Jul 30, 2016 00:04
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Big Mean Jerk posted:Just how bad were Enterprise's ratings? Below a 2.0? No, but they came close. The finale was below 4, and most of the last season was lower still. e: for reference, Farscape never broke 2.0 at any point in its run. Enterprise performed badly relative to its budget and its predecessors, but most sci-fi shows wouldn't have gotten close to its audience. It had about the same kind of viewership figures as Babylon 5. skasion fucked around with this message at 00:33 on Jul 30, 2016 |
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Jul 30, 2016 00:19
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The real problem I have with Quinto's Spock is that he has no gravitas. A lot of that is the voice. Nimoy's voice is iconic: gravelly, measured, and authoritative. You can instantly take him seriously as a not-quite-military officer when he speaks. His reading says "this dude knows what is up", and that's how the character is written too. Quinto's voice is much higher pitched and his delivery is a lot faster. His voice doesn't command respect. When he delivers lines full of technobabble he doesn't sound like an officer or scientist speaking with authority; he sounds like a pompous nerd.
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Jul 30, 2016 04:05
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remusclaw posted:This is a major irritant for me, though this movie generally allowed me to ignore it by not bringing it up like the last two did. Chris Pine is now one year older than Shatner was when the series started. This is a weird consequence of how the movies are marketed: basically the producers are worried that if teens and twentysomethings can't relate to the characters, no one will watch the movie (which is probably true enough). Which is why Quinto still plays Spock like a manchild despite being older than Nimoy was when he played the character for the first time.
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Aug 2, 2016 22:26
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Timby posted:To be honest, I think it's more that Quinto doesn't have much range as an actor. He was basically cast as Spock because the Internet created an uproar over how much of a resemblance he bore to young Nimoy. He doesn't have much capacity for subtlety and a lot of his inflection is closer to Tim Russ' Tuvok than anything else. Fair point, though the comparison to Russ is harsh on Russ. Tuvok is a pretty serious, well-defined, and respectable character, which is more than you can say about Quinto's Spock.
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Aug 2, 2016 23:09
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I don't have a problem with Jaylah replacing Chekov since they have pretty much the same (very thin) character of a spunky foreign geek with weird diction and an accent. If we're adding more ladies to the bridge crew I'd prefer Rand, but take what you can get I suppose.
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Aug 3, 2016 00:10
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Blade_of_tyshalle posted:Was Whoopi even in the first season? I feel like Ten Forward was a season two innovation. No. She first shows up in the b-plot of the season 2 premiere, the one where the a-plot is that Troi gets impregnated by an energy being in her sleep.
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Aug 4, 2016 16:50
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The Thaw is dumb and its plot is paper thin, but it's still weird enough to be memorable. It's the kind of cracked out nonsense I could imagine TOS' later seasons including. The ending is also a 10/10 scene regardless of how tongue-in-cheek you take it to be. The real poo poo episodes in Voyager aren't things like Thaw and Threshold because ultimately everyone can sit down and talk about how bizarrely lovely they were. The real poo poo episodes are the dozens and dozens of hours that just slide by with nothing memorable whatsoever happening and in the end you, and the entire cast and crew of the show, just make like these whole days of mediocrity never happened at all.
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Aug 8, 2016 16:28
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There's nothing necessarily wrong with catsuits, but miniskirts would have been better.
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Aug 15, 2016 21:41
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Trek shows have always been informed by world-political vibes from the point of view of Joe Q. WhiteBread-American. TOS has this tense Cold War in space with other major powers who are the ideological opposite of our heroes. In TNG our heroes have triumphed over the Soviets and for their next trick, take on the forces of unbridled capitalism and technoindustrial complex. In DS9 the Cold War victory seems increasingly irrelevant as the federation is forced to choose between selling its ideals short to combat a new form of hostile ideology, and succumbing to it. Voyager isn't about anything because it's a poo poo show, and Enterprise is about the same thing as DS9 but filtered through 9/11 beer goggles. I guess what I'm saying is that any post-TNG story would either be alarmingly dark or else Voyager levels of ungrounded in reality. DS9 is about as contemporary as Trek can get without entirely losing its faith in humanity. I'm not saying there wouldn't be some entertainment value in seeing a hyper cynical post Dominion astropolitics show where the Federation, Romulans, and Klingons are in the same sort of standoff as world powers today but uh, yeah I don't really want to see Star Trek take on the fact that the government has an utterly massive and unaccountable bureaucracy devoted to spying on its own citizens, not for any particular reason, just cause it can.
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Aug 17, 2016 17:28
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Cojawfee posted:It's not like any of the post 9/11 stuff had never happened before. At least this time we didn't round people up into camps. Except for that one at Gitmo
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Aug 17, 2016 17:36
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The only unfinished thing about DS9 is the original premise of the show. Sisko was sent to DS9 to make sure Bajor was ready to join the federation, and they never actually join the federation, just kind of get pushed into bed with them by the Dominion War.
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Aug 18, 2016 15:31
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Man Trap is actually a really good episode. The ham handedness of the narration lets up after the first few episodes, mostly.
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Aug 24, 2016 18:17
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Big Mean Jerk posted:It's kind of insane how good TOS' first season is. I'm not gonna say it's all downhill from there since it did include The Alternative Factor, but it probably has a higher density of absolutely classic episodes than any other season in the entire franchise.
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Aug 28, 2016 02:56
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8-Bit Scholar posted:It was wise of them to kill her off at the height of her relevancy. Jadiza didn't have a whole lot to do a lot of the time until they brought Worf along and by the end of Season 6 she and Worf's relationship has been a major on-going subplot and she's had a ton of screen time and episodes built around her. Hell, her wedding has to easily compete for the top three DS9 episodes of all time. Her death sets the tone for the last chunk of the show--the grim darkness of interstellar war. Season 7 feels a lot like one very long war drama too, so it kind of serves as the big tragedy to lead into that. Nana Visitor was loving Avery Brooks and then dumped him for Siddig, who she later had a child with and married, or at least that's what I've heard. No idea if there was any other on-set drama of that sort. I like Ezri also, and wish she had more screen time because Jadzia has maybe two good episodes in the entire first three seasons of the show and is on the whole a vastly less interesting character.
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Aug 30, 2016 23:56
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Pakled posted:The whole Jadzia/Worf relationship was probably the weakest aspect of DS9. This I don't agree with, it's the best thing they did with her character and adds a side to Worf that TNG never really played up. And there's no way it's as stupid and lame as Rom and Leeta's relationship, or anything to do with Bashir being an augment.
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Aug 31, 2016 00:17
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Baronjutter posted:I've never seen the star trek cartoon but I just watched this episode and it's amazing. Watch the rest of it, seriously. You wouldn't think there'd be any other episode as crazy as that one, and yet.
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Sep 2, 2016 11:29
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More consistently poo poo, maybe e: loving lol someone in this world thinks there are thirty good episodes in Enterprise
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Sep 4, 2016 02:53
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:Depending on the person, it can work to deliberately start on a comedy episode like A Piece Of The Action. You get a good sense of the characters, but because the plot's already got you laughing, it's not as jarring to also have a chuckle at the overall aesthetic. By the end of the episode, you've been able to have fun with the characters, so you'll be able to get invested and pay attention to them better when you move on to a more serious episode. I kind of agree with this. My first Trek episode was Shore Leave
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Sep 7, 2016 20:47
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I like the episode because it has Kirk actually dealing with a messy workplace relationship instead of just loving and leaving. Of course it's all forgotten the next week, but what can you do.
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Sep 11, 2016 02:31
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Gammatron 64 posted:Yeah, it really bugged me that they left so much unresolved. From the way Garrett was acting, she almost seemed suspicious. It's the major motivating factor of the episodes villain. She wanted a command but couldn't get one, she alleges it was because she was a woman (and while the episode suggests it also has a lot to do with her being batshit insane it doesn't really dispute her allegation that women aren't allowed starship commands), and she is prepared to do evil super science to get one, but because she is a woman is a weak pussy who can't handle the pressures of command and becomes hysterical. "Your world of starship captains doesn't admit women" could definitely be interpreted in a way which allows for women to be starship captains in the TOS era, but that seems to me to be clearly opposite to the intent of the line and indeed the episode as a whole. If there were a female starship captain out there, why doesn't Kirk, or the writer, just respond to this accusation by pointing out Captain Tits McGee of the USS Token? Moreover the episode is predicated on the assumption that women aren't fit for command. Unless there's something I've forgotten in the movies, women commanding starships is strictly a 90s Trek thing.
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Sep 12, 2016 19:48
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No point in denying that the episode exists or trying to forget it. As much as we would like to believe it is, Star Trek's ideology isn't always cool and good and there's a lot of episodes which are stupid/unconvincing on a thematic as well as a dramatic level. Not all of them are as morally jarring to most modern audiences as "Turnabout Intruder", but I'd prefer to take that episode as a reminder that the people who made the show weren't eternal paragons of virtue but rather could only write in the context of their society and their values. Of course if you believe in a "canon" that might be a bit harder, but imo it doesn't matter much that in the 60s they conceived of Starfleet in such a way that women were self evidently unfit for authority positions. Sign of the times.
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Sep 13, 2016 14:41
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Isn't there a series bible or pitch for TOS, like for TNG?
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Sep 13, 2016 16:40
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egon_beeblebrox posted:I can't make up my mind whether "The Empath" is great or terrible. The Empath sucks. It aims for minimalism but only looks cheap and dull. It's just not an exciting hour of tv. It's not ridiculously terrible like Alternative Factor or And the Children Shall Lead, it's just weak and boring. I can see why Kelley liked it so much since the treatment of McCoy's character is a little unusual, but for me it's totally lacking in tension because we know as always the main characters won't be permanently harmed and Gem herself is such a non-entity. It's one of the worse third season episodes in my opinion. I would legitimately rather watch Spock's Brain. It may be loving stupid, but it moves along at a good clip and has some really funny deliveries, intentionally or no. I can't think of a single concrete moment when I think of The Empath, just a bunch of people meandering around an empty set.
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Sep 18, 2016 00:14
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Dear Doctor is great because it puts in perspective just how terrible Enterprise is, that one of its most interesting and memorable episodes is the one where the captain and the doctor go to a strange new world, seek out new life and new civilizations, and promptly decide to commit a genocide of omission upon them. e: like seriously, the only thing I could think of after I watched Dear Doctor for the first time was "holy poo poo, if Dr McCoy were here he'd have slapped the poo poo out of all these smug murderous bastards". skasion fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Sep 19, 2016 |
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Sep 19, 2016 19:16
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Yeah, that's what I mean when I say it shows how bad the show is in general. The fact that there's an actual issue going on and that the captain and crew actually have to come up with a solution for it puts it ahead of every single previous episode of Enterprise, even though their solution is LITERALLY worse than Hitler.
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Sep 19, 2016 19:29
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Not sure how you can say that Brooks is overacting at the end of Far Beyond The Stars, given that he is portraying a man utterly breaking down and exposing his deepest, most irrational convictions and beliefs to an uncaring world that will only use it as an excuse to destroy his miserable life.
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Sep 22, 2016 20:44
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Gammatron 64 posted:Well, when you put it that way.... I mean, I'm being a bit tongue in cheek but I do think he needs to play the scene with as much emotional intensity as possible there, even at the risk of looking a bit silly. The situation calls for a Shatneresque freakout.
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Sep 22, 2016 21:09
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I'd like if we had any idea what the show was about thematically. So far we haven't really heard anything about the writing apart from it's a starship exploration show. We've already had four of those and half of them sucked rear end. I'm not sure they've come up with any hot new ideas for how to make the concept less tired in the intervening decade. I assume it will be more serialized than previous Trek shows have been, but Enterprise tried that too late on and it still mostly sucked rear end. I'm unconvinced that the franchise has much of anywhere left to go and all the talk about using the original series as a touchstone makes me worry that there isn't really going to be anything to this show, apart from its desire to remind you of when you used to watch a different, better show.
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Sep 24, 2016 20:57
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kaworu posted:Oh, c'mon - it isn't rocket science. It's not like there is some magical formula or a special challenge that a STAR TREK™ show needs to have or accomplish to be successful. It's actually far easier to be successful with a franchise like Star Trek, because you aren't obligated to do some huge amount of world-building and massive exposition dumps and clunky writing and scenes spent trying to establish the setting of genre shows like these. Star Trek is Star Trek, and on a very basic level these showrunners know what that means, and they know how to use that, take advantage of that, and ideally turn it on its head at times. I'm not sure why you think I'm talking about some kind of secret to Star Trek that they need to crack. The mere fact of something being called Star Trek doesn't mean it's good tv. It doesn't even mean it's likely to be good tv. The last two series of the Star Trek franchise were lazy, cliche-ridden, stupid, patronizing, abject crap from beginning to end. There are not 24 good hours of tv out of the entirety of them. And that despite the fact that the people who made them were franchise veterans who had been working on Star Trek for like a decade and thought they understood it as well as anyone could. My reason for lacking optimism about this show is that there doesn't seem to be a clear direction for it apart from "it's kind of like TOS". I haven't seen anything about it yet that convinces me this is anything other than more of the same old Star Trek, which you will watch because you liked those Star Trek shows back in the day, right? But this is the exact same attitude which led to the development of the two terrible, pitifully poo poo shows that I referred to above. Under new management, the result might be different, or it might not.
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Sep 24, 2016 23:06
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