Star Trek: Classic or Dud?

Never watched the original series much (wasn't alive at the time of the originals, don't recall seeing the reruns), but became a fan of the movies when they started. Fell into things fully when TNG began (watched from the first episode to the last) and still followed those films, though after starting with both Deep Space Nine and Voyager I gave them up fully in late 1995 and never looked back. Have a couple of the, ahem, 'technical manuals' around the place but that's about it -- the other books I've avoided. Have no costumes, have always avoided any kind of conventions general or specific, take cruel pleasure in laughing at Shatner's follies in the fifth movie, as should we all (the fake MST version is the only one to see, frankly).

Unsurprisingly, Picard is my fave (I was actually a Patrick Stewart fan already), but both Avery Brooks and Kate Mulgrew did excellent jobs in their Sisko and Janeway roles. Scott Bakula as Archer just scares me as a concept. TNG cast my favorite ensemble bunch, though I will give it up (oh yes) for George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, DeForest Kelley, Leonard Nimoy, Terri Farrell, Alexander Siddiq, Rene Auberjonois, Ethan Phillips, Robert Beltran and Robert Picardo. Data ist rad. And so forth.

note: star trek: the motion picture looked awful. but all the ones after that were awesome. how much cooler would next generation have been if they had those burgundy uniforms? kirk looked like the motherfucker in EVERY MOVIE wearing that shit.

ned: you think picard is tougher than picard. what. the. fuck. did you see wrath of khan? did you see that shit? he fucking kicked khan's fucking vinyl-chested ass. 'oh, yeah, you have genesis, khan but you don't have me. if you want me, you're going to have to come down here. you're GOING to HAVE to COME DOWN HERE!!!@#@@!$#'. you can say ANYTHING ELSE about kirk vs. picard, picard is smarter and more civil and professional or whatever the fuck, but nobody in their right fucking mind would say that he's tougher than motherfucking kirk. i am actually literally angry about this, so i need to calm down now. christ, i'm such a trekkie.

I thought it was Riker who had the twin. ;-)

that riker transporter twin episode is some stupid shit though.

original series: chekov...maybe, but that's stretching it. he kicks ass in the movies, he's just sort of useless on the show. but the original cast (chekov being a second series addition) is flawless.

next generation: RIKER RIKER RIKER, troi, that doctor who replaced crusher for one year, yar, data (come on, admit it. he's a super-advanced andriod and he can't understand common phrases? he thinks a 'lemon' is a literal lemon for god's sake. i'm sure the writers kissed each other for how fucking cute that was. anyway mudd's women were way smarter). and WESLEY. geordie would get on my nerves if he were played by anyone but le var burton, but he's a childhood icon and can therefore do no wrong.

deep space nine: the only memorable character besides the captain (who is cool) is quark the ferengi (who is also cool). but the rest aren't even fleshed-out enough to annoy me. wait, no, the short-haired chick with the ridges on her nose aggravates the piss out of me. and the doctor, god.

voyager: it has an indian. and an asian guy. and a black vulcan. and the captain is a woman. only as annoying as that new ghostbusters cartoon where one of the ghostbusters was in a wheelchair. like, what the hell?

evidence that kirk is the best captain: all series after that have had kirk ripoffs that are nowhere as good as kirk because they are not as cool as the godly shatner. like riker, or that really forgettable womanizer guy from voyager. i mean, what the hell, don't you just want to punch riker in the face? does anyone not want to? anyone?

All-time favorite episode is "Charlie X," where the Enterprise picks up some teenaged human waif from a planet, who then runs around the ship melting off the faces through telekinesis (?) of various crew members whenever he's teased or horny. What teenager couldn't identify with that?

I remembered TNG being great when I was 12, but I watched a few of them more recently and they were AWFUL, even the later ones. I think I might have quite liked Deep Space Nine later on, when they started having season-long story arcs, but I never saw enough of them to make sense of what was going on.

How come most of the crew are American yet NONE of them are chronically obese? (except Scotty who's - ahem - ""Scottish"")

In the 60s it was a bizarre mix of US military 'might is right' fascism and Hippy-dippy, 'why can't all nations hold hands?' idealism (though still managing to be sexist ~ Uhura the Captains secretary and Yoaman Rand (is that right) the Captains bit of [onboard] fluff. AND THATS IT SISTERS!)

It should have ended there as it ran out of ideas and people stopped watching it. But OH NO, they had to bring it back in the 80s with over-long, plodding bore-a-thon 'Next Generation' episodes that tapped into the touchy-feely / inner-child / New-Age nonsense that was on the go at the time. I mean - Counsellor Troi = WHY? She even sits on the bridge next to the Captain!! the message is in the 25th Century a bloody social worker is one of the most important jobs on a space ship.

But it was all so clinical and corperate and soul-less, advocating Pro-conformity and how you should be a good citizen. And too much sanctimonious liberal finger-wagging for my liking.

And it starred Whoopi Goldberg.

And how come all the baddies end up as the Federation's (UGH!) freind, taking tokenistic jobs as Navigators etc?

And why was it always so fucking BORING?

Another Star Trek I had over the other incarnations -- BETTER BACKGROUND MUSIC! Esp. that duh-dum-duh-dum-DUH-DUM-duh-dum theme whenever Kirk's ass was in deep ship.

On the other hand, Troi's mother was AWESOME.

And the original ST's music was Varese-influenced, hey? Hmmmm ... never knew that! Maybe I should go over to that "Who Opened Your Ears" thread in ILM and change an answer or two of mine :-)

Troi's mom was cooler than Troi, not more attractive! Aigh, my eyes!

troi: not attractive.

crusher: nuh-uh.

troi's mom: uh.

that guy who was troi's mom's butler or something and was the guy who played lurch in the addams family movies: mrowr.

question: who liked first contact? it was like a next generation episode, only like, cool. plus, supercool supporting cast with alfre woodard and the farmer guy from babe.

someone start a star wars thread so i can bitch about how much that sucks except for empire strikes back.

hey i just remembered something else i liked in next generation, although it's from that bastard movie where kirk dies (falling off a walkway! the fuck? he's saved the universe like two hundred times and he falls of a walkway and dies? fuck). um anyway, i liked when data said 'shit'.

Andrew L has not mentioned his great expertness in this area, for some reason. I know about it because I very briefly worked under him on a Star Trek magazine!

wondering if they reused the scenes with tasha or whether they were new.

new, according to Memory Alpha. her and Miles are guest stars.

"Interesting thought experiment! I've been wondering how cinematic production values, with the same scripts, might've changed my enjoyment of some of the more spectacular episodes of TNG ("All Good Things", "Yesterday's Enterprise"), and maybe it's just a lack of imagination but I don't think the modern, glossy look would've added much."

This is one of the reasons The Motion Picture feels odd. It's the only one of the films that tries to use the language of cinema to tell a story. It has lengthy, dialogue-free montages and the occasional visual metaphor. Whereas the other films didn't have any time for that.

Given that TNG began a few years after Miami Vice it's surprising, in retrospect, that it's so cinematically conservative. It might have benefited from some musical sequences where Worf and Geordi silently checked their phasers while "Brothers in Arms" wafted over the tannoy. Or even special guest stars such as Glen Frey, or Frank Zappa as an alien from a planet where people communicate exclusively with overbearing sarcasm. But no, it's as if the producers were dead set on dialogue-heavy character drama, which I suppose is a good thing because the show hasn't aged all that badly.

I always assumed that Trek tried to deal with the long-form story-arc quasi-cinema thing in the wake of Bablyon 5. But DS9 began the same year, not a few years later. And yet there is still some debate as to whether one is a rip-off of the other, according to this fascinating Reddit thread which - as one of the comments points out - feels like a USENET post from 1994. My recollection is that Enterprise tried to do series-long arcs, but after its failure (and the dead-end of Lost and the eventual failure of Battlestar: Galactica) the concept fell out of fashion for a few years.

what should i watch next? chronologically it's discovery (seen series 1) and then picard. both are complete, which is good, but I've heard mixed things about both.

lower decks also complete and had sounded mostly positive.

stargate? farscape? firefly again?

lower decks SLAPS

also Farscape is never a bad idea truly great show

LEXX

That Reddit thread re B5 is comprehensive but in no way new info of course - people were hashing it out back in the Usenet days which is prob why Usenet got mentioned I guess. As everyone prob knows by now I've always firmly been in the "they stole a lot from JMS" camp, because you just cant get past the amount of "coincidences" even when you put aside ones that can be explained by trope/cliche (such as "set on a space station/next to a wormhole/next to a planet/political machinations")

Its a shame B5 has dated so badly because with modern TV tech it could look glorious - they were *really* innovative with their aliens.

yesterday bcs I'm sick with a cold I watched TAS "The Practical Joker" for a laugh, then by sheer coincidence the next thing I watched was the Very Short Trek that referenced it (talking about how it was the first mention of holodecks), so that was fun.
I really wish they'd do more Very Short Treks, those ruled.

pretty sure they *haven't* done this on any of the recent shows, but

i want a supercut of every time someone says 'on screen!' and then it's too small so they say 'magnify' or 'enhance' because come on figure it out

I am for some reason giving Enterprise another chance with "The Andorian Incident," which seems to have come highly recommended. Except I kind of still hate the show for its incredibly chauvinism and paternalism, i.e. oh those Vulcans are sneaky, humans will blunder into this situation and fix things. I don't suppose any of that lets up at all over the course of the series?

I maintain my request for more Very Short Treks btw

Seconded.

xxp the vulcans remain kind of sneaky, but i don't think the humans (with one large exception in s04) really 'fix things'. for the most part the humans act like whiny and foolish younger siblings

my main issue is that archer is a poor (and yes, chauvinistic) captain, but not in a way that's interesting. the non-humans, as ever, are the best main characters. and the third and fourth seasons are better than the first two. except for the finale, of course

my favorite part of bluesky is that that i 'subscribe'(?) to the Treksky feed and check in sometimes when i'm bored

at the moment it's mostly ppl loving or complaining about strange new worlds, but the best thing is the non-star-trek posts it pulls in:

any mention of phlox, which are pretty flowers
just saw something random like 'seven of nine doctors recommend x'
any mention of vulcan
any mention of 'measure of a man' or 'inner light' or 'final frontier' that are completely unrelated

there are others that i cannot recall now but are also delightful

aww

I’m rewatching a little DS9 and having seen the doc and that Lower Decks episode with an explicit alternate Garak/Bashir relationship makes it even more entertaining. It’s the episode where Dukat’s daughter thinks she has feelings for Garak and he’s like “you are barking up the wrong forest” (my paraphrasing)

I was just riffing with a friend and the funniest terrible thing they could do is end Strange New Worlds without Pike have anything bad happen, and then have a Lower Decks special that puts Pike in the box

have to say that in the 2009 kelvin reboot (which i quite like!)

'hi christopher, i'm nero' is an incredible line reading

rip the kelvin timeline

weird to think that spock died in a shuttered continuity

that's very dc comics

just like 12 monkeys

RIP my wallet:

https://www.lego.com/en-au/product/star-trek-u-s-s-enterprise-ncc-1701-d-10356

https://www.lego.com/cdn/cs/set/assets/blt8af7d8435f15160a/10356_WEB_SEC02_NOBG_en-gb.png?format=webply&fit=bounds&quality=70&width=800&height=800&dpr=1.5

Okay, the trombone and the Wesley Sweater® are pretty excellent, and I can respect the economics of the standard cat piece making a good Spot. Great hair piece for Crusher, and black hair I've never seen before on La Forge. Troi's uniform looks weird without the contrasting color on the V-neck, though, and it bugs me how often they skip top pieces for bald guys and leave them with exposed studs on their heads! They bothered making a scalp and printing a little hair for Lego George Costanza, surely Picard's temples have earned the same.

(Also holy shit Trayce did you see lower on the page where that shuttlepod comes with a minifig RO LAREN?)

Picard with his trademark double pint of Earl Grey.

so the fourth Kelvin Timeline movie got axed? I assume to make funds available for Gremlins 3

http://www.mwctoys.com/REVIEW-091924a.htm

I did see the Ro fig yes! Apparently you only get her if you do the prerelease purchase, bloody Lego.

In other news, tonight I have idle time so I am watching a curated threefer:

- the First Duty (TNG)
- Lower Decks (TNG)
- The Inner Fight (LD)

For the story continuity! Its fun to do this with eps when one can.

Update: it was a good choice.

Yeah, when I watched The Inner Fight I went back to those TNG episodes, good stuff. Also the LD episode Wej Duj, which introduced T’Lyn and the Klingon back in season 2 (I wish he showed up a bit more).

Heck, the penultimate episode of LD even made me want to go back and watch some Enterprise, thanks to T’pol. Her interactions with Curzon was the highlight of that episode IMO

probably old news to most, but just in case, this is the best social media account of all time: https://bsky.app/profile/nocontexttrek1.bsky.social

Hm!

https://deadline.com/2025/11/star-trek-movie-jonathan-goldstein-john-francis-daley-1236616716/

We rewatched a few of the films in the last week, and dear god, Nemesis is even worse than I remember. But I think it's mainly cos i find Tom Hardy so wooden. I know I'm probably alone in that.

I just watched "Carbon Creek" and it was the first episode of Enterprise that I genuinely liked, without hearing it on a scale!

It's a shame they don't have an alternate, beardless, Riker head for people who want to recreate the first series of TNG. Or an alternative head for Dr Crusher that turns her into Dr Pulaski, for fans of the second series. There must be dozens of people who want to re-enact the clip show! Or the episode with the space African people that no-one remembers fondly.

I'm being horribly sexist but they could have extended Dr Crusher's legs just slightly, by a fraction of a millimetre. Because she had long legs. On the other hand "The Measure of a Man" was in the second series, and that was pretty good.

Will the inevitable LEGO(R) Borg Cube just be six square baseplates with stickers (rrp £450)?

At first I didn't realise you were talking about the minifigs and, well, I had some weird visuals lemme say that much.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1wYVdL8FsQ

So, those of you in the US may not have known this but Netflix outside the US has been showing all of TOS, TAS, TNG, VOY and DS9 for years now. It helped me get up to speed!

Now, it's being removed from Netflix next month. I'm not gonna sign up to P+ just for this one show, that ain't happening. Sailing the seas is our usual goto but for 7 26 episode seasons of multiple shows, that is... a lot.

have all of TOS & TNG on blu ray, really wish DS9 was also available :_;

FYI: Pluto TV broadcasts TOS, TNG, and DS9 on their own channels. The ads are horrid and repetitive, but it’s a fine enough way to watch individual episodes. There’s also a sort of “roulette” channel where you only know what you’re gonna get once you click on it.

Right now we’re watching DS9, because it’s the one I have seen the least of.

The ads are horrid and repetitive

i'm at the point of screaming whenever the music heralding the schaub podcast comes on

I am just looking to visibly repair my intestinal lining with Rinvoq, ok

Check out

I was gifted the TNG box set DVDs for xmas, so thats a start :) No idea if they have deleted scenes/commentary (do people still do that?) but its nice to at least own 'em now.

Have we talked about Star Trek Intakes here yet? Guy reinserts bloopers into episodes, the results rule:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgPy2kU9nEk

also it seems I'll be going to that bootleg Star Trek immersive experience thing. thanks to this thread I am looking forward to asking for permission to speak freely, and if granted I will voice my reservations with all due respect.

I love those yeah Ive seen them before :)

So, we watched S1E1 of my box set last night. I was not aware that the non-bluray version is basically a direct rip/transfer from the original VHS copies (apparently). Not only is it in 480 SD, it looks like a terrible recording of a TV show from the 80s. *nothing* like the versions I'm used to on Netflix.

I am ropeable, because I know my bf probably spent a lot of money on the box set. Is it all this bad or just S1? Is it my Playstation playing the DVD in a shit way? Is my TV too good? I am sad.

Australia : in a bad temper : ANGRY

ty!

Uh?

“ropeable” iirc

Oh, I guess I didn't actually mean I was angry hah. Just dissapointed/sad that a gift that cost a lot turned out to be kinda cruddy quality. Anyway no one's answered me, is it known its a shit set, does it get better in later seasons!? It looked like an old VHS recording of a Days of our Lives episode.