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DS9 has unquestionably the best first season of any Star Trek series. It's still not really good, but it is the best.
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Jan 4, 2023 17:14
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Weren't the independent parts of the Prometheus also automated or remotely controlled or something, so it was really like one ship with some attached drones? I find the Prometheus really silly and not very Star Trek, but the concept seems okay.
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Jan 7, 2023 12:51
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The most amazing thing about LD to me is that they've legitimately managed to capture the soul of what made 90s Trek good, and I really didn't think that was possible with the way modern Trek was going. SNW and Prodigy are good, but there's something special about LD at this point.
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Jan 15, 2023 09:22
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Big Mean Jerk posted:I’m rewatching Voyager and… I don’t hate it? It’s not good, especially during the Kes years, but it’s usually just inoffensively fine. Voyager's aggressive blandness made it really stand out until, uh, fairly recently. My current stance on Voyager is that it's okay as background noise while I'm working, but I regret the time I actually tried to watch the whole thing. It's the only 90s-era Trek where I really can't just sit down and watch an episode for the umpteenth without finding myself bored to tears.
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Jan 22, 2023 04:40
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What kills Voyager for me is that I kind of just openly dislike most of the characters. Harry and Tom are charisma blackholes. Neelix is... Neelix. B'elanna basically doesn't exist except as a 2d caricature. Chakotay is frustrating as hell because he gets brief moments of being a cool character before getting sucked down into terminal blandness or racist stereotypes. Kate Mulgrew is great, but Janeway is terrible unless you pretend that the writers intentionally created a bad captain and a psychopath. Tuvok, Seven, and the Doctor are the only consistently good characters. I dunno. It's the characters and cast chemistry that make Star Trek shows rewatchable for me, and I just don't find Voyager's characters entertaining.
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Jan 22, 2023 04:51
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Twincityhacker posted:Wow, I don't really like Prime Directive stories. Latest one was "Pen Pals" and... ugh. To be fair, that's (supposedly) only part of the issue that the prime directive is supposed to avoid. "First contact can severely gently caress up less technologically advanced civilizations" is not actually a bad conceptual starting point.
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Jan 22, 2023 14:34
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Timeless Appeal posted:The Marquis would have been an interesting idea for another space franchise, but Star Trek is built on the premise of a post-scarcity world. Traveling through space and setting up a new life for yourself just isn't that big of a deal. Star Trek is a show where one of the main characters has a vineyard that's been in his family for hundreds of years. Homesteaders who care more about where they live than any kind of practical consideration fit in just fine. The only real problem with the Maquis is that the writers weren't really interested in doing much worldbuilding around them, so a whole lot about their motivations and methods just didn't make sense.
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Jan 25, 2023 04:25
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IShallRiseAgain posted:Even not for profit hobby projects have lovely leaders who go on power trips, and entitled demanding users of such projects. Yeah, but the difference is that nothing is tying you down to that project. If it sucks, you can leave. I feel like that would not only make those "jobs" suck a whole lot less, but it might also do a lot to curb those negative impulses since you don't really have any real power over anyone. You won't get to run your little hobby project for long if everyone keeps leaving.
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Jan 25, 2023 13:59
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Hollismason posted:Yeah I guess that Federation post scarcity makes things a little easier on people just not put up with people's bullshit and people who are assholes don't get to run anything unless their in Star Fleet. Starfleet gets portrayed as super competitive, so it's actually kind of understandable that it's got something like a more recognizable hierarchy and attitudes. You have to really want to be there and there are tons of people waiting to take your place, so there's a limit to how much you can just slack off. But also it seems like there are plenty of Starfleet jobs for people who don't want to go megahard and your worst-case scenario is still that you go back to post-scarcity paradise so, uh, not too bad.
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Jan 25, 2023 23:12
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Hollismason posted:I'mma go ahead and say after rewatching it like 5 to 7 times Voyager has kind of grown on me. I actually like it even when its real bad. Stockholm syndrome
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Jan 28, 2023 18:23
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Yeah, it's a great episode, and it's got a lot of little things to love about it. It's great that none of the main cast ever doubt that she's a con artist, and even the minister dude has a pretty practical outlook on the whole thing and turns on her as soon as she's exposed. Data also owns any time he's in any kind of position of authority.
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Feb 8, 2023 23:42
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dr_rat posted:People always talk about how DS9 was so much darker and serious, but it still always had plenty of humor and light moments for characters to balance that. Like the epsiodes about dealing with War PTSD, or committing ethically horrible things for possibly a greater good, even just hit a lot harder when their between lighter topsides, and you know the shows made us care about the characters. My Annoying Internet Opinion is that DS9 was in fact not grimdark, but instead as close as any 90s-era Trek came to capturing the weird 60s-era lightness of TOS. That show had a ton of episodes (good or bad) that were just outright intended to be comedy and a huge amount of light character moments even in more serious episodes. DS9's characters actually seemed to have lives with leisure time and fun that wasn't some weird attempt at showing the sophistication of everyone in the future. Basically modern Trek could learn a from it about how you do serialized TV with serious plotlines without turning everything into a stupid slog.
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Feb 11, 2023 16:28
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Timby posted:I think this is largely because, even if it was in the background, a near-galaxy-spanning war was happening for the final two seasons, and had been simmering for the two seasons prior to that. Yeah, but that dark tone was only present in specific episodes, which isn't really any different from any other Star Trek series. Voyager's whole premise is arguably super dark and includes ongoing plotlines involving diseased, organ-snatching horror aliens and species that hunt sentient life.
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Feb 12, 2023 02:06
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cenotaph posted:Aside from everything else he's bad at, Abrams has no sense of pacing or scale. We need to go to place -> push button on ship -> we're there. Managed to make a copy of ANH without realizing the importance of the training scene on the falcon between the escape sequence and arriving at the death star. Yeah, this is by far my biggest pet peeve with JJTrek and JJWars. Everything else is tolerable, but the utter failure to pace anything or create any sense of scale completely ruins those movies for me.
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Feb 14, 2023 04:15
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Yeah, there's definitely no sense in even talking about eras if you aren't grouping TNG/DS9/VOY/ENT together. Enterprise looks more modern in some ways, but it's very clearly cut from the same cloth as the other shows of that period in a way that's completely distinct from modern Trek. Part of the problem with Enterprise (aside from the total lack of charisma in the main cast) is that half the episodes feel like they were lifted right out of a Voyager reject pile.
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Feb 21, 2023 08:20
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I don't completely hate Enterprise, but it was a show whose whole premise was to be unique and revolutionary (at least in the context of 90s Trek) run by the most boring, risk-averse, and lovely people imaginable. It was doomed from day one because the people creating it were utterly unsuitable for the concept.
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Feb 21, 2023 22:30
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I like DS9's ending, but the bittersweet ending with everyone running off to do their own things ~*~separately~*~ is definitely a very 90s way to close off a show
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Feb 22, 2023 00:43
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MikeJF posted:Also here's a cool fan made video you all should watch because it's awesome The best part of this edit is how hilariously irresponsible it makes the one-quarter impulse power order look.
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Feb 22, 2023 17:21
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Minidust posted:It somehow never occurred to me that only half of the main DS9 cast was in Starfleet (well aside from Worf tipping the scales later on). That’s wild for a Star Trek show and another reason why Voyager’s whole “mixed crew” concept feels so half baked. It's not super obvious because it's a concept that's actually well-written and well-integrated into the show, so the writers never feel the need to beat you over the head with episodes focusing specifically on crew division. There were plenty of little things that didn't totally make sense (like Odo constantly getting away with doing a fascism), but it still worked so much better than just totally ignoring those differences and turning everyone into the same bland Starfleet stereotype. It also probably helped that the actual Starfleet characters misfits and oddities in their own ways.
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Feb 26, 2023 16:09
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Disco sucks because its writing is a mess and no one knows what to do with it, not because they're wasting the concept of the spore drive or whatever. Who cares if they were exploring another galaxy? It doesn't matter, because it would've had the same garbage writing. Voyager literally did the "oh look here's an entirely new area to explore" thing and it didn't magically make that show good. A good writing team should be able to adhere to the spirit and feel of Star Trek even if the main crew only explores a single planet per season. Finding new areas to explore doesn't do poo poo because Star Trek doesn't have a well-defined universe that's currently limiting writers in any way. TNG was still exploring new places right up into its seventh season because there's nothing stopping writers from creating those stories in any Star Trek time period or setting. Paradoxish fucked around with this message at 05:26 on Mar 6, 2023 |
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Mar 6, 2023 05:07
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zoux posted:Like Kira is way more "Maquis" toward Sisko in the first few episodes than Chakotay was through the whole run of Voyager. And he was right back "Go over my head again and I'll have your head" is so not a thing you'd expect the main commander in a ST series to say. DS9 was basically a template for how to do mixed crews in a way that was interesting but still very Star Trek-y. Voyager's writers pretty clearly didn't have the confidence to handle crew conflict without making it antagonistic and mean (just look at the holodeck mutiny sim episode), so they just melted everyone into a bland Starfleet instead.
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Mar 6, 2023 20:09
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I don't think B5's CG effects aged poorly because the things about that show that don't look great didn't really look great when they aired, either. My dad was hardcore into B5 and even as a kid I remember thinking the effects really did not look good compared to Star Trek, even though I didn't get the CG/practical distinction at the time. B5 is loving great and I love it but it's wonky in ways that aren't really a product of its time so much as just the inherent wonkiness of what it is.
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Mar 7, 2023 17:12
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Arivia posted:You can tell it’s Star Trek because it’s got an optimistic message about humanity’s ability to grow that we have completely failed to live up to in the years since. Star Trek's optimism is predicated on us blowing ourselves up first, so don't jump the gun just yet.
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Mar 7, 2023 18:19
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Strom Cuzewon posted:I really love this as part of Trek. It manages to feel almost optimistic about nuclear hellfire - yeah, we hosed up, we almost wiped ourselves out, but we grew and overcome it. I think it would be a bit too end-of-history to have us smoothly transition from modern neoliberalism to glorious space utopia. Star Trek's apocalypse is explicitly optimistic, as weird as that sounds. Nuclear armageddon was basically a foregone conclusion for a lot of people, so a scenario where humanity powers through and comes out better on the other side is the good ending. "We don't blow ourselves up" was just never an option.
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Mar 7, 2023 19:43
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FlamingLiberal posted:You can handwave some of that with the idea that they believed that they could succeed without time travel and that time travel was plan B Yeah but if you have time travel then why not use time travel as your plan A all the time I think the best possible head canon is to just extend year of hell's butterfly logic to first contact. Everything has collateral consequences so a sphere dropping out directly above Earth and going to that particular point results in the most optimized future for the Borg. Everything else fucks the future up for the Borg in ways you can't imagine because you're not a super
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Mar 8, 2023 03:08
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Tom Guycot posted:I just started watching B5 for the first time earlier this week, after a lifetime of going "ehhhhhhhh maybe another time, it looks pretty hokey", and i'm about halfway through season 1 and really surprised how much I'm enjoying it. Like, yeah it looks cheap as poo poo, and the CGI looks like reboot levels, but it works as a plucky little show punching above its budget, the makeup and alien designs are great, and honestly the amiga looking CGI lets the show be a lot more dynamic and plentiful with its space sequences that Star Trek was able to at the same period. It sneaks up on you. I don't remember when I first watched B5 (early 2000s maybe?), but I was already super biased against it and absolutely sure I was going to hate it. I basically had the first few episodes on as background noise and I was pretty sure I was going to give up on it, and then somehow I was fully invested by the end of season one. And honestly season one is noticeably much worse in just about every way compared to the later seasons.
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Mar 12, 2023 06:25
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I hate that my brain constantly tries to tell me that BOBW is awesome because it inevitably leads to disappointment every single time I hit the second part. I literally just typed this post and yet somehow I'm still thinking "I haven't watched BOBW in a while, I should watch it!"
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Mar 19, 2023 02:13
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Yeah, you can't treat a TV two-parter as two separate episodes. BOBW is a movie split in half, and the back half is just not good enough. You've gotta actually keep the momentum from the first half and provide a satisfying conclusion and it just... doesn't, really. It certainly doesn't help that they slam all that momentum directly into a brick wall at the split, either.
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Mar 19, 2023 04:31
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skasion posted:Mulgrew’s good. Janeway’s character writing is all over the place, but she works with it and has some deliveries for the ages Janeway would've definitely be a contender for best ST captain if the writers could have picked an actual personality for her instead of rocking between them so hard that she's been head canon'ed into a pyschopath.
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Apr 10, 2023 18:03
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MikeJF posted:But without the 'we wish we could stop Voyaging and go home' and 'this ship isn't set up for this' parts. Those parts hardly ever existed in Voyager and they constantly had to toss in throw away lines about how exploration is cool and good and who cares if it delays us for another two weeks Like a solid 90% (if not more) of Voyager was straight up recycled TNG-style episodes with barely even any lip service paid to Voyager not being intended as an exploration ship. Sometimes "we need this rock!" was used in place of the usual "Starfleet told us to go here!" but the stories were otherwise indistinguishable.
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Apr 20, 2023 16:48
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MikeJF posted:So no problem to cut them out altogether! Yeah, but Voyager is still poo poo even though the concept of the show is a ship completely separated from Federation space exploring totally unknown territory. The parts where they complain about not being home aren't what brings it down because they basically don't exist. I don't care enough to actually check, but I'm pretty sure they don't even mention their predicament in a solid majority of episodes in any given season. If anything the show is extra explore-y because the crew constantly need to justify doing stupid poo poo by talking about how Starfleet is all about exploring and look how pretty this nebula is
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Apr 20, 2023 17:19
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MikeJF posted:Oh, I know. I'm not saying it'd be the secret formula, just saying that it's what I'd like a show to do next because I'm burned out on Federation stuff and prequel stuff and exploring established stuff and want to just go somewhere new. It'll only be good if it's good, of course. Yeah, that's fair. I think this has just become my official Star Trek Internet Discussion Pet Peeve because there are definitely people out there who think that some kind of "return to the basics" is a magic formula when Star Trek writers have clearly shown over and over again that they can gently caress that up, too.
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Apr 20, 2023 18:22
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Sash! posted:Some of us do mention things like the LMC because it is the best possible way to avoid the Borg, Dominion, and the possibility of running into anyone we already know Move farther away without addressing the bad writer problem and what you're going to get are increasingly strained ways to tie everything back to the existing universe. Hop to another galaxy? Time for secret origins of the Borg or oh look, here's the real source of some random monster of the week from TNG. And if the Federation can do it then so can everyone else and that would definitely show up sooner or later. My preferred setting for new Trek is definitely out in unexplored space (just the very frontier of Federation territory, it doesn't matter) because those are the stories I like. But frankly I'd rather let the writers go hog wild by occasionally bringing up Klingon politics or whatever because at least there'd be that blow off valve for tying things back into the universe without the stupid bullshit that shows up in shows like Discovery or even Voyager and Enterprise. Paradoxish fucked around with this message at 02:28 on Apr 21, 2023 |
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Apr 21, 2023 02:23
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Sir Lemming posted:I think that's only because people have been saying "actually DS9 is good even though it's less popular than Voyager" for decades. Inevitably the pendulum swings just from that. The problem is that DS9 wasn't actually less popular than Voyager, at least not when they're were airing, even when both shows were airing simultaneously. I feel like a lot of this stuff about DS9 being the less popular one really predates Voyager, because DS9 was unequivocally less popular than TNG. Voyager was supposed to be a return to form, but people kind of forget that it didn't really work out at all. DS9 gets remembered as the show that couldn't live up to TNG's legacy, and everyone forgets that Voyager failed to reverse that decline, too.
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Apr 29, 2023 17:37
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nine-gear crow posted:Voyager is also the most-streamed Classic Trek series of the whole lot. It was also more watched than DS9, even back in it's heyday.  I don't know why this is such a big pet peeve of mine, but this isn't true, not if you go by Nielsen ratings. https://web.archive.org/web/20110708042532/http://www.madmind.de/2009/05/02/all-star-trek-movies-and-episodes-in-two-charts/ Classic 90s Trek ratings are literally just a chronological decline with TNG at the top and Enterprise at the bottom. Voyager was marketed to hell and back, but it never even managed to beat DS9, which was itself a disappointment compared to TNG. And yes, I know that Voyager aired on UPN vs. DS9's direct run to syndication, but the trend is exactly the same between both series. Even the premieres never managed to capture the same audience as the premieres of the previous series.
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Apr 30, 2023 15:57
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Voyager was at its absolute dumbest whenever it played around with gotta-go-fast technology. Magical warp stuff should have been 100% off the table.
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May 2, 2023 04:43
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90s Star Trek was very rarely willing to engage with the idea of the Federation just being objectively in the wrong and both sides-ing the Maquis totally undermined the whole thing. The only way to make them sympathetic was if they were just unequivocally misled or abandoned by the Federation, but they both knew what was going on and were offered an all-expenses-paid way out of their predicament. Repeatedly. Like their political argument was literally "the Federation should go to war with their fascist neighbor so we can live on this specific planet that wasn't ours in the first place."
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May 11, 2023 12:48
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Angry Salami posted:You'd think that, if Sisko's mission was to bring Bajor into the Federation, he'd at least get a diplomat or something. But it seems the Federation's negotiation strategy was to hang around in orbit and just hope the Bajorans would sign up. Starfleet command staff are basically expected to be diplomats which is, uh, weird, but not having a dedicated one tracks with the rest of the shows. Captains do tons of diplomacy, admirals show up for the important (and evil) stuff. Presumably there are civilian diplomats who come in later to hash out the details, but the shows constantly imply that Federation captains are running around making big diplomatic decisions with only guidance from higher-ups.
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May 17, 2023 19:49
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CainFortea posted:You can't really have a "diplomat only every other sunday" kind of thing though. Diplomats are expected to be able to make binding agreements. It would be weird if you had someone who could bring in an interstellar state with 50 billion people spaning 20 planets, but needs permission from the ship driver to go on leave for a week. TOS walked this line in a bunch of episodes, with either civilian diplomats or higher ranking mission commanders taking the lead. TNG would have been fine with a primary cast civilian diplomat that only had authority in certain situations and was advisory otherwise. Star Trek constantly pulls the thing where the chief medical officer can yell at the captain, so I don't think there'd be a problem with having four or five episodes where the chief diplomatic officer or whatever has to put their foot down. The mission requirements/Federation ideals/ship safety conflict is already a hallmark of Star Trek plots anyway.
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May 18, 2023 15:45
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bull3964 posted:Best cartoon to live action translation ever, just based on that one line. I was honestly about to say I hate this but then I saw that line and now I'm onboard.
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May 24, 2023 17:17
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