Star Trek: All Good Threads...

[Jaxom 1974]

To be fair, if Voyager were created today, it's likely that the issues with it in terms of crew and other items likely would have been addressed.  It seems like a lot of shows in the last 20 years are pretty good about keeping background characters the same...

[Toth]

9 minutes ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

To be fair, if Voyager were created today, it's likely that the issues with it in terms of crew and other items likely would have been addressed.  It seems like a lot of shows in the last 20 years are pretty good about keeping background characters the same...

Well, TOS and TNG also had a fairly consistent staff of background characters (even though the Enterprise D's crew was, like, 7 times larger than Voyager's). Remember Lieutenant Kyle?

I really just never understood Voyager's obsession with killing mauve shirts off in really dumb situations. Like... what's the point? It felt outright spiteful in the last season.

[williamjm]

11 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

The first episode does mention it, at least that they’ve a finite number of torpedoes (about 35?) that they can’t replace.

38 apparently, according to this definitive accounting of how many of them got fired over the 7 seasons:

 

[SpaceChampion]

On to season 3 of Enterprise.  Why do they always take off their helmets and breathe in the alien atmosphere full of unknown pathogens?  WHYY

[SpaceChampion]

Alright, some wild-ass speculation:  the multi-dimensional parasites infecting Archer in the S3E8 episode Twilight are from the same multi-dimensional realm created by the mycelial network.

[Werthead]

I'm doing a rewatch of the Star Trek movies right now and I have to say the old ones have held up much better than expected.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

Next up on the rotation is...oh shit.

[Durckad]

I know people love to hate on Star Trek V, but... I don't think it's the worst. It's certainly not good and actually quite bad at times, but it's also got a dumb, fun charm to it.

[Ran]

Just now, Durckad said:

I know people love to hate on Star Trek V, but... I don't think it's the worst. It's certainly not good and actually quite bad at times, but it's also got a dumb, fun charm to it.

It does have its moments, I agree. I do think it's the worst of all Star Trek films, though.

[Werthead]

27 minutes ago, Durckad said:

I know people love to hate on Star Trek V, but... I don't think it's the worst. It's certainly not good and actually quite bad at times, but it's also got a dumb, fun charm to it.

I agree it's not the worst, but it's probably the second-worst (Into Darkness, very, very comfortably, takes the overall prize). It has some good moments, and maybe the best Kirk-McCoy-Spock scenes in the movies, and a few other good scenes, but it has a shitton of problems as well, mostly stemming from Shatner's ego.

[sifth]

28 minutes ago, Durckad said:

I know people love to hate on Star Trek V, but... I don't think it's the worst. It's certainly not good and actually quite bad at times, but it's also got a dumb, fun charm to it.

The best scenes in the film are at the beginning with Kirk, Spock and Bones camping, IMO

I always love scenes when heroes take a break from saving the world to do something fun.

[Werthead]

Just now, sifth said:

The best scenes in the film are at the beginning with Kirk, Spock and Bones camping, IMO

I always love scenes when heroes take a break from saving the world to do something fun.

This reminds me of the number of DS9 pitches they had which were just "O'Brien and Bashir having an adventure in the holodeck," but they kept establishing them doing really crazy programmes which would have required too much money to do justice (the Alamo, the Battle of Britain, the clan wars in Ireland), and couldn't justify something low-budget apart from the James Bond ripoff (which they only did twice because they were threatened with legal action).

[sifth]

30 minutes ago, Werthead said:

This reminds me of the number of DS9 pitches they had which were just "O'Brien and Bashir having an adventure in the holodeck," but they kept establishing them doing really crazy programmes which would have required too much money to do justice (the Alamo, the Battle of Britain, the clan wars in Ireland), and couldn't justify something low-budget apart from the James Bond ripoff (which they only did twice because they were threatened with legal action).

Which is a shame, since Our Man Bashir is such a fun episode. In fact it was the episode that convinced me to give DS9 a second chance.

[Jaxom 1974]

There are some minor blips in it, but I still maintain that Wrath of Khan isn't just the best Trek movies, it's a top ten all time science fiction movie...

[RumHam]

42 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I agree it's not the worst, but it's probably the second-worst (Into Darkness, very, very comfortably, takes the overall prize). It has some good moments, and maybe the best Kirk-McCoy-Spock scenes in the movies, and a few other good scenes, but it has a shitton of problems as well, mostly stemming from Shatner's ego.

I'd have to watch them both again, but I remember Nemesis being really bad as well. Possibly worse than V. and I say that as someone who grew up on TNG and only watched TOS once straight through. 

[Lightning Lord]

4 hours ago, sifth said:

Which is a shame, since Our Man Bashir is such a fun episode. In fact it was the episode that convinced me to give DS9 a second chance.

Literally watched this yesterday and it was delightful. It was such fun to see most of the actors doing something different with their talents.

S4 of DS9 is sooooo good. With some clunkers (just skipped over The Muse about ten minutes ago and moved onto For the Cause). But damn Hard Time is brutal and amazing.

[Aemon Stark]

11 hours ago, RumHam said:

I'd have to watch them both again, but I remember Nemesis being really bad as well. Possibly worse than V. and I say that as someone who grew up on TNG and only watched TOS once straight through. 

I think V is a lot more amiable and watchable than Nemesis or Into Darkness. It does feel a lot more like a fan-made movie - or at least fan-made script - but that kinda works? Nemesis makes little sense, had an oddly limited budget which really shows, and really wastes Tom Hardy is one of his earlier major roles. 

[Werthead]

14 hours ago, RumHam said:

I'd have to watch them both again, but I remember Nemesis being really bad as well. Possibly worse than V. and I say that as someone who grew up on TNG and only watched TOS once straight through. 

Nemesis is not fantastic but the amount of hate that gets dumped on it is a bit odd. It's a much better film than The Final Frontier or Into Darkness, and probably on a par with Generations. Maybe better (and certainly more ambitious and interesting) than Insurrection.

I guess I'll find out when I get to it in the rewatch. I actually don't think I've seen Insurrection or Nemesis more than once (and Insurrection is the only Star Trek film I never saw in the cinema).

[Toth]

I second the notion that Into Darkness is the worst Star Trek movie. Star Trek 11 made me feel angry and betrayed after I realized how dumb it is because it is from the cinematic point of view a really well made movie. Into Darkness just made me feel apathetic towards nuTrek. It is just as nonsensical, but with none of the levity and excitement that 11 managed to evoke.

I found Star Trek 5 also okay-ish. It is below-average, but yeah, had some really fun character moments, it's just that the main plot felt boring and out of place (though I must admit I did like that notion of that 'planet of galactic peace' being such a shit-hole that the ambassadors of each faction have gotten along by virtue of being equally miserable).

Nemesis I have on DVD and after watching the bonus features I have a feeling that much of the hate of the movie is directed at the director. Similarly to J. J. Abrams Stuart Baird is quite open about how he was just hired to do a movie and couldn't care less about Star Trek. And of the cast everyone except Patrick Steward ("I got to drive a buggy!") everyone else from the cast seemed unable to hide their vitriolic dislike of the atmosphere on set. That even in the official bonus material! Looking at their even more outspoken rants later on, I'm not surprised in the least.

But weirdly in terms of writing I never found it as ludicrously convoluted as the Abrams movies, mostly because it does at least give its best to explain its contrivances. Other than that the atmosphere, starting with the writing and continuing with the egregious and pointless mind rape scene, is probably the aspect where it falls apart as a Star Trek movie. I don't know, I still found it decent enough.

Then again, you should always keep in mind that I'm one of the guys who found Insurrection fantastic, about on the level of The Voyage Home. I'm just giddy about a movie that embraces being simply a TNG episode with movie budget, which is I think how every Star Trek movie should aspire to be instead of forcing itself into the action flick pigeon hole. Similarly that's why I also surprisingly liked Star Trek Beyond given how much it just wants to be a TOS episode.

[RumHam]

5 hours ago, Werthead said:

Nemesis is not fantastic but the amount of hate that gets dumped on it is a bit odd. It's a much better film than The Final Frontier or Into Darkness, and probably on a par with Generations. Maybe better (and certainly more ambitious and interesting) than Insurrection.

I guess I'll find out when I get to it in the rewatch. I actually don't think I've seen Insurrection or Nemesis more than once (and Insurrection is the only Star Trek film I never saw in the cinema).

 

I'm curious how you feel once you get there. I re-watched it before Picard and Thought it was really bad. Not Into Darkness bad but few things are. It's funny how (in my opinion) the two worst Trek movies both try to ape Spock's sacrifice in Wrath of Kahn.

Things I remember hating about Nemesis in no particular order:

-The aforementioned dune buggy scene.

-pulling B4 out of nowhere so they could revive data later on

-Ignoring both DS9 and TNG to bring Worf and Wesley back into starfleet. (as a huge fan of DS9 acting like Worf's development on that show never happened was especially infuriating) 

-Pulling the remans out of nowhere so they could....have evil looking gremlin dudes? Seriously how many offshoots of Vulcans are there. 

-the mind rape

-The nonsensical one time use one person emergency transporter. You're telling me they couldn't have just hugged and beamed back together? Like if a fat person tried to use it only half of him would go? Data's not even a life-sign. And of course this technology will never be seen again. 

-Doing a romulan movie without Tomalock and evil Yar Jr! It barely uses the romulans as we know them at all. instead opting for a weird "these evil guys have been taken over by even more evil guys who were always there but never mentioned" thing. 

I could forgive a lot of that if it were an entertaining movie, but it is not. 

[Toth]

To be fair, the Remans aren't Vulcans last I checked. I'm pretty sure they were the natives of the Romulan solar system that were subjugated when the Romulans arrived there. So it is actually somewhat connected with their backstory and usual policy.

Also I don't think Sela would have fit the tone of the movie and her knee-jerk antagonism to the Federation would have made it difficult to end the movie on a similar hopeful note that a lasting peace with the Romulans has gotten achievable. Not to mention in the Star Trek EU and Star Trek Online Donatra becomes quite an active player in Romulan politics, separate to Sela's "I maybe should stop fucking all the things up" arc.

Full agreement on the other points though.