Star Trek: Attack of Shatner's Toupee Tribble

[Toth]

4 hours ago, Durckad said:

I kinda agree on TOS, except I do actually like it. It has some great episodes, but man, Trek fans in general give it way too much leeway, probably because of nostalgia or because it was the first Trek. Either way, it's incredibly inconsistent with its plotting, writing, worldbuilding, and overall quality. I do understand Roddenberry and his writers were literally making it up as they went along so the various lore inconsistencies don't really bother me, but the fact that a good number of the episodes are, at best, mediocre, that does bother me.

That said, still worth watching for the good episodes. If I ever do a rewatch, I'd probably end up skipping at least half of the episodes, including most of Season 3.

True. I must admit, it always irked me how there are only very few really good TOS episodes that I can watch without cringing. Specifically "Balance of Terror", "Errand of Mercy", "Trouble with Tribbles", "Journey to Babel", "The Doomsday Machine" and... that's it, pretty much. Granted, there are a couple of average episodes as well like "Arena" (as silly as the Gorn fight is shot), most of the time travel episodes, "Space Seed", "A Taste of Armageddon", "The Devil in the Dark" and maybe "A Piece of Action" just for the silliness of that planet's hat and the Enterprise shooting a stun phaser barrage into a city block. Have I missed any? I think if you've seen these episodes, you've got the best of TOS alright.

[IheartIheartTesla]

On 5/25/2023 at 1:17 PM, Maltaran said:

Have to say, I am minorly annoyed that Jack Quaid doesn’t really resemble Boimler.

I was under the impression the animators tried to make the characters as close to the voice actors visually as they could. Quaid even has some purple in his hair in the promo shots maybe?

At any rate, I think Newsome and Quaid are pretty similar to their characters personality-wise at least. 

Edited June 2, 2023 by IheartIheartTesla

[Werthead]

13 hours ago, Durckad said:

I kinda agree on TOS, except I do actually like it. It has some great episodes, but man, Trek fans in general give it way too much leeway, probably because of nostalgia or because it was the first Trek. Either way, it's incredibly inconsistent with its plotting, writing, worldbuilding, and overall quality. I do understand Roddenberry and his writers were literally making it up as they went along so the various lore inconsistencies don't really bother me, but the fact that a good number of the episodes are, at best, mediocre, that does bother me.

That said, still worth watching for the good episodes. If I ever do a rewatch, I'd probably end up skipping at least half of the episodes, including most of Season 3.

The best summary of TOS was in the Futurama episode: "What is it about?" "It's about 79 episodes, maybe 30 good ones."

That's probably being a bit generous as well.

[RumHam]

The last TOS episode I watched was Obsession, with the killer gas cloud. There's a scene where the gas is coming in a vent, spock tries to shut it but the switch breaks. So he starts trying to block the vent with his hand even though it's clearly too big. At least the show can be funny sometimes. 

[Durckad]

4 hours ago, Werthead said:

The best summary of TOS was in the Futurama episode: "What is it about?" "It's about 79 episodes, maybe 30 good ones."

That's probably being a bit generous as well.

I could probably put together a list of 30 episodes I enjoy, but I'd have to work really hard to do so and it'd be very questionable as to whether they're all actually good or not.

13 hours ago, Toth said:

True. I must admit, it always irked me how there are only very few really good TOS episodes that I can watch without cringing. Specifically "Balance of Terror", "Errand of Mercy", "Trouble with Tribbles", "Journey to Babel", "The Doomsday Machine" and... that's it, pretty much. Granted, there are a couple of average episodes as well like "Arena" (as silly as the Gorn fight is shot), most of the time travel episodes, "Space Seed", "A Taste of Armageddon", "The Devil in the Dark" and maybe "A Piece of Action" just for the silliness of that planet's hat and the Enterprise shooting a stun phaser barrage into a city block. Have I missed any? I think if you've seen these episodes, you've got the best of TOS alright.

City on the Edge of Forever.

It's not my favorite (that would be Balance of Terror or Doomsday Machine, which I do think is truly good), but it's generally considered one of the best.

I'd also probably have a couple more on my list, but I think that covers most of the really important ones.

3 hours ago, RumHam said:

The last TOS episode I watched was Obsession, with the killer gas cloud. There's a scene where the gas is coming in a vent, spock tries to shut it but the switch breaks. So he starts trying to block the vent with his hand even though it's clearly too big. At least the show can be funny sometimes. 

Well, at the very least it's not The Animated Series...

[RumHam]

1 hour ago, Durckad said:

Well, at the very least it's not The Animated Series...

Still the only one I haven't seen, I was gonna do it next.

[Werthead]

The Animated Series is okay. The animation is stiff as fuck and they reuse the music (which is pretty awesome in a cheesy 70s kind of way the first time you hear it) too much, but the scripts are pretty imaginative, and it's a great relief to get through stories in just 22 minutes rather than 50 (few TOS episodes really earn their length).

They even have some pretty cool stuff, like Uhura commanding the Enterprise and making a good job of it (twice!) and the episode Bem has the first instances of meta-commentary and humour in the franchise, with Kirk screaming with frustration at getting captured by some alien arseholes and asking why the hell this keeps happening to them, to Spock's confusion.

Also the Kzinti from Larry Niven's SF novels show up, which is weird (well, until you realise he wrote the episode).

[Durckad]

3 hours ago, RumHam said:

Still the only one I haven't seen, I was gonna do it next.

It's worth it, if you're a Trek completionist. If not... eh. Lots of other, better things to watch.

Like Wert said, the scripts are imaginative, it does somewhat take advantage of the medium of animation (introducing more alien environments and ummm aliens), and the shorter lengths do help in keeping the episodes from dragging too much. Also, it doesn't rely much on the 'God-like alien fucks with the crew for arbitrary reasons' trope that TOS utilizes waaaaaaaaaay too much.

That said... much of it feels really undercooked. A lot of the scripts are made up of good, imaginative ideas, but many fail in the execution. Also, if the lack of consistency in TOS bugs you, TAS will drive you insane.

Don't get me wrong, it's not terrible, but I would be hard pressed to recommend it. I certainly will probably never do a full rewatch of it ever again

[RumHam]

Man, I knew about the Plantet-Arium* episode of South Park and Dagger of the mind. But I never realized just how much influence Star Trek had on South Park. I'm hearing lines from The Gamesters of Triskileon that to me is twenty year old south park dialogue. All the stuff about "the providers." Plus Funnybot was basically Nomad. 

*Could this be how Arium from Discovery got her name? a tribute to a tribute?

[SpaceChampion]

T.I.L. Cheryl Gates McFadden goes by Gates McFadden as an actor, but as Cheryl McFadden as a choreographer.  Here she is talking about doing the dance choreography for Labyrinth in this behind the scenes documentary.

 

 

[RumHam]

I didn't realize M'benga was a TOS character. I guess he gets demoted? Anyway I'm finally done. I never really liked the first movie either, but I guess I'll try this "Directors Edition" version before moving on to the movies I actually like. 

[IheartIheartTesla]

SNW S2 about to drop tomorrow (at least here in the US). Reviews that I looked at think the first 6 episodes are as good as S1, but not particularly envelope-pushing. I think thats ok, they can start taking chances once we get more comfortable with the characters.

Also, Klingons are visually closer to the TNG norm, which to me is far better than the Disco travesty.

[sifth]

1 hour ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Also, Klingons are visually closer to the TNG norm, which to me is far better than the Disco travesty.

Yup, which is something I'm really looking forward to. Now I just hope they are fun, like the Klingons on DS9 were.

Edited June 15, 2023 by sifth

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

What time does the episode drop… EDT?  Anyone know?

[Corvinus85]

A good start to the new season of SNW.

Hemmer was a great character gone too soon, but I think they wrote a good replacement in the character of Pelia. She was fun in the first episode and interested to learn more about her newly introduced species. I'm hoping the next episode features more Captain Pike. The one iffy part about the episode for me was

Spoiler

the Captain America serum that M'Benga and Chapel injected themselves with to become temporary superhumans. Is that a thing? That part of the episode wasn't written that well, especially the part where the Klingon they beat up tells them that there were armed guards who only show up at the end conveniently. 

 

[Ran]

Carol Kane as the Lanthian Pelia was such a surprise and it seemed so out of nowhere. And then when we got more details...

Spoiler

Are we to take it that Pelia was on Earth back in the 20th century, masquerading as Simka, a woman of an indeterminate European nation who had a thing for a mechanic by the name of Latka Gravas... ? 

This episode was an okay start, but I do feel like there were more than one iffy part:

Spoiler

The "juice" stuff did seem completely out of leftfield, as I don't recall anything like it being mentioned in the previous season or on Discovery. 

But the plot of the Broken Circle... were they genuinely planning to kamikaze the crew of that ship to start a war? They didn't really explain why or how these people would be so fanatical about starting the war again, and they certainly couldn't have won against the heavy cruiser since they noted the class of ship was way too weak.

 

[Corvinus85]

3 hours ago, Ran said:

Carol Kane as the Lanthian Pelia was such a surprise and it seemed so out of nowhere. And then when we got more details...

  Hide contents

Are we to take it that Pelia was on Earth back in the 20th century, masquerading as Simka, a woman of an indeterminate European nation who had a thing for a mechanic by the name of Latka Gravas... ? 

This episode was an okay start, but I do feel like there were more than one iffy part:

  Hide contents

The "juice" stuff did seem completely out of leftfield, as I don't recall anything like it being mentioned in the previous season or on Discovery. 

But the plot of the Broken Circle... were they genuinely planning to kamikaze the crew of that ship to start a war? They didn't really explain why or how these people would be so fanatical about starting the war again, and they certainly couldn't have won against the heavy cruiser since they noted the class of ship was way too weak.

 

I wondered that, too

Spoiler

It was clearly about money for them. But actually they did hide in the iron debris, so maybe they were planning a surprise attack, catch the Klingon cruiser without shields. Except they came out shooting backwards which alerted the cruiser.

 

[RumHam]

Spoiler

There were a few things I didn't like. Spock stealing the ship for starters. It's a star trek trope, but has spock at this point earned that kind of dedication and trust from these people? This is a society that never had a mutiny before Discovery (stupid, but we're stuck with it.) This isn't quite that, but it's close. Plus like he doesn't even contact Pike for at least advice!? He steals the ship on his first command that before he was nervous about! All to save La'an who I belive was only on the ship a short time. 

The idea of dividing custody of a mining planet but switching every month is incredibly stupid. If they'd at least said every X months that would have made it exponentially less stupid. 

The "what to say when you go to warp" thing has been covered a few times, at this point. Though I did like what he went with. 

"It'll take almost a minute for us to freeze to death." come on writers, we just saw someone freeze and shatter in like fifteen seconds on Picard. 

The super-serum thing has already been covered. It's like they became augments for a bit, could this be why M'Benga gets demoted? 

Finally, they hit "spock is not like other vulcans!" a little too hard. Did the klingon have to say it twice, in addition to spock ackownledging it to himself? It doesn't seem consistant with OG Spock basically being the model for all vulcan characters that came after, or Bones's racism towards him. 

Anway despite all that, I still liked it well enough. It was fun.

 

Edited June 15, 2023 by RumHam

[Jaxom 1974]

Fascinating starting episode to the season...

Spoiler

...at least in that they sidelined their Pike and Number One...

As clunky as some of the tale was, and it was clunky in places, it certainly sought to line up some more over arching story for the season...

 

[sifth]

I can't stand the voice of the new chief engineer. I don't know what sort of accent they're trying to use, but it makes my head hurt.