Star Trek: Attack of Shatner's Toupee Tribble

[Lord Varys]

4 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

We don't know the details yet. I assumed her species was a refugee aliens species that stayed hidden until became advanced and enlightened enough to accept them. 

Possible, too.

[RumHam]

9 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

They certainly could. But why should or would they if that adds drama and is kind of foreshadowed by Chapel's interest in archaelogical medicine? Spock has T'Pring and Chapel will get Korby. And it could be fun if the real guy was literally nothing like the robot character-wise.

Also, TOS makes it impossible the Spock/Chapel romance deepens. They will have to pull the plug on that eventually, possibly with Spock doing some extreme Vulcan thing on his emotions.

Oh I agree they should, I'm just saying they can and will do whatever the writers feel like. Star Trek always has, but it's especially common for them to ignore TOS stuff. 

Like I don't think James Cromwell's Cochran ended his days on another planet. You don't get the "wormhole effect" if your engines aren't calibrated right. Klingons and Romulands don't fly the same ships. People were familiar with cloaking devices prior to then...

[Jaxom 1974]

15 hours ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Regardless, I'm pretty stoked for S2 SNW since they dont do 'bad' episodes IMO. Still waiting for a 'one for the ages' episode though.

While I think we have to wait for the series to progress a little further, you don't think the Season 1 finale ranks pretty high? The attention to detail in recreating so many of the beats from the original "Balance of Terror" I thought wad remarkable...

[IheartIheartTesla]

Yes, it does rank pretty high, but also derivative from a previous effort, no? At any rate, wonder how others felt about 'classic' TNG episodes as they came out (for instance, Chain of Command). This is a new experience for me, evaluating episodes as they freshly arrive- maybe with time we can appreciate some of them more.

[Jaxom 1974]

I don't know that I'd use the term derivative in this case.

But yes, it will ultimately take time to sift through what is truly deserving to be in a pantheon, regardless of our initial reactions...

Edited June 18, 2023 by Jaxom 1974

[Werthead]

7 hours ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Yes, it does rank pretty high, but also derivative from a previous effort, no? At any rate, wonder how others felt about 'classic' TNG episodes as they came out (for instance, Chain of Command). This is a new experience for me, evaluating episodes as they freshly arrive- maybe with time we can appreciate some of them more.

I remember me and my dad watching Conspiracy as it came out and watching Picard phaser someone's face off and just going, "what the hell was that?"

I think, generally, speaking, that most "classic" episodes were almost acknowledged as classics instantly. Everyone knew that Q Who?, Measure of a Man, Best of Both Worlds, Yesterday's Enterprise and The Inner Light were the real deal as soon as they aired.

I think the main retrospective changes were lesser-tier episodes. I recall The Most Toys being considered meh on release, but people are much more positive about it now and see Data's struggle with morality ending in the apparent decision to murder a sentient being in cold blood for the greater good as being very compelling (although under-explored, as usual). Also Move Along Home is much more positively-regarded now for its meta commentary on Trek tropes than on release, when it was regarded as very much pure WTF.

Everyone knew Code of Honor and Up the Long Ladder were horseshit when they came out, and so it remains.

(also it helps we did have a very, very active magazine and fanzine-based fandom going on at the time, so opinions could be shared and disseminated)

[Werthead]

Just completed a full rewatch of TNG (started when Picard S3 ended) and was intrigued to see where I'd land on it this time around. My last rewatch was when the remastered version came out on Blu-Ray in 2012-15, so that rewatch was spread over three years a decade ago. This was the first time I'd ever sat down and mainlined the show over a couple of months.

My first conclusion was that you can't knock the classics. Measure of a Man, The Best of Both Worlds, Q Who?, The Inner Light, Cause and Effect, Deja Q, Lower Decks, Sins of the Father, Darmok, Tapestry, The Enemy and The Defector, Chain of Command, Parallels, The Pegasus and Matters of Honor are probably the outstanding episodes of the series overall. Seasons 3 and 4 are the high point seasons, both delivering a very high hit rate of great episodes, whilst Season 1 is probably the weakest in terms of overall episode quality.

However, I did find myself enjoying the somewhat weird, off-kilter and even vaguely horror-based atmosphere of some Season 1 episodes, something it shares with TOS Season 1 as well. There's a sense of mythic SF grandeur in the likes of Where No One Has Gone Before (over-egging the pudding of how awesome Wesley is aside) that the show is simply incapable of later on, when it becomes a bit too comfortable for its own good. It's also frustrating that Skin of Evil falls so early in the run: having an alien entity who does not give one single flying shit about Picard's moralising speeches and simply kills for the hell of it would work so much better without its dumbass voice and cheesy effects.

The big winners of this rewatch were some mid-tier episodes which I found more interesting this time around, like The Most Toys where Data's decision to flat-out murder the guy at the end of the episode is genuinely disturbing and completely under-explored. True Q also felt a bit better this time around (Patrick Stewart has probably his most underrated comedic moment of the series when he says he's known Q "for years," with the look and sound of growing horror at how long they've been putting up with Q's bullshit). Likewise some episodes I had enjoyed previously I found a bit weaker this time around, like The Drumhead which feels like it's saying something important but then just falls apart at the end. Qpid is also very dumb, not sure why it seems to be higher-rated than Deja Q. TNG has a very solid number of 7/10 episodes which are nothing special but fun to watch: Ensign Ro, Captain's Holiday, Timescape, Disaster, Starship Mine, Contagion, etc. I also enjoy the episodes in which the crew's tendency to sappy trustworthiness is shoved in their faces, particularly both Legacy (where Ishara Yar manipulates the crew by exploiting their warmth towards Tasha, betrays them and gets away with it) and Preemptive Strike (where Ro is given both an excellent ending and one that justifiably enrages Picard).

I do find the show's greatest strength is its tendency towards "anti-drama," where it refuses to do the things other cliched TV shows do to make their stories work like having characters hold the idiot ball; they do occasionally in TNG, but most of the time it's competence porn, and enemies best the characters through reasonable cleverness rather than bad writing. Brothers and The Hunted are good examples of enemies getting loose on the Enterprise and causing havoc and the crew's measures to deal with them are logical and intelligent, just insufficient. This is in sharp contrast to more recent Trek shows which fall back on tedious "draaaahma" tropes.

The biggest weakness I found was its episodic nature. Very strong story arcs like Worf's Klingon troubles, the Marquis/Cardassian stuff in the last two seasons, the Romulan arc from Seasons 3 to 5 and the Borg storyline all whither due to a lack of attention. If given more time and attention, they could have resulted in many more great episodes whilst ejecting scores of meh-to-awful standalone episodes. It's also odd to have so many interesting characters apparently just hanging on the ship but being seen rarely (Keiko and Miles O'Brien, Ensign Ro, Ensigns Gomez and Lefler, Dr. Selar etc) because the message at the time was that continuity was poison.

The other big weakness is how few of TNG episodes have really compelling guest stars. David Warner, Andreas Katsulas (obviously), Terry O'Quinn, Robert O'Reilly and the Ferengi repertoire (including a pre-DS9 Armin Shimerman) are all very good but there's a lot of mid-ranking Hollywood day player types who just phone in tedious performances you don't give a shit about. They really should have used Suzi Plakson way more, if not as K'Ehyler then certainly bringing her back as Dr. Selar rather than just constantly mentioning her as still being on the ship but never showing her. But there are a few episodes that could have been crap which are saved by the guest stars being great: John Anderson and Anne Haney between them salvage Season 3's Survivors and make it one of the great underrated episodes of the series (whilst the wide-eyed tedium of the actors in Who Watches the Watchers? actually sabotages what could have been a great episode, to the point they decided to have another go at it in the movie Insurrection), and Ashley Judd somehow makes The Game watchable despite it having both a dogshit premise and a heavy Wesley focus. She deserved an Emmy for that alone.

Overall, still a great series with a leading man performance for the ages in Patrick Stewart, but the show overall is fairly inconsistent before and after the Season 3-4 double punch, and wildly inconsistent in its first two and last seasons (and Season 5 is resting a bit too heavily on the pillars of Darmok, Cause and Effect and The Inner Light, for that matter), and its inability to follow up on promising story ideas over more episodes often hurts it. Still the second-best Trek show overall, though, and its very best episodes are probably the best-ever episodes of the franchise, even if DS9 is far more consistently good.

Edited June 18, 2023 by Werthead

[Lord Varys]

21 hours ago, RumHam said:

Oh I agree they should, I'm just saying they can and will do whatever the writers feel like. Star Trek always has, but it's especially common for them to ignore TOS stuff.

Like I don't think James Cromwell's Cochran ended his days on another planet. You don't get the "wormhole effect" if your engines aren't calibrated right. Klingons and Romulands don't fly the same ships. People were familiar with cloaking devices prior to then...

Sure enough. They sure as hell ignore aesthetics, makeup and tech design ... but the writers of SNW really seem to want to play around and use the human element. That's why we got T'Pring and George Kirk, I imagine. And they also seem to go out of their way now to not contradict the fact that James T. and Pike didn't really meet or work together in the main timeline.

Actually, I do loathe how First Contact basically ruined a lot of TOS backstory - not just many of the more dystopian aspects of the near future settings given us in TOS, TNG and even DS9, but also, as you say, the way Zefram Cochrane is presented in TOS. The guy there is from Alpha Centauri and we have many hints in TOS indicating that mankind slowly developed space flight tech. And it was actually kind of nice to see how they already had some colonies and stuff before Cochrane came up with the warp drive.

Not that it is bad that the first contact between Vulcans and humans really got things going - but things were simplified and dumbed down with that thing. Even more so with the silly World War III scenario in the movie.

Even if you try to make sense of the dystopian new future settings - and nobody actually does that these days - the space between the present and the First Contact is awfully crowded with very different and partially contradicting settings.

In general, I think the charme of ST is mostly it being silly. I know that folks who like watched TNG back in the 80s like it because of the characters and all that - but it is mostly cheesy SF, especially TOS but also, from a modern POV, a lot of TNG.

[IlyaP]

6 hours ago, Werthead said:

Just completed a full rewatch of TNG (started when Picard S3 ended) and was intrigued to see where I'd land on it this time around.

How do you manage to do this? Like, are you doing other things while it's playing in the background? Or are you plonked down on your couch watching each and every episode? I'm in awe of people who have the attention span to watch what effectively amounts to 178 (give or take?) hours of a program. (I have awful ADHD, which makes such endeavours anxiety-inducing.)

[IheartIheartTesla]

14 hours ago, Werthead said:

Also Move Along Home is much more positively-regarded now for its meta commentary on Trek tropes than on release, when it was regarded as very much pure WTF.

Some FB groups I am on still slag it off, but I found it a fairly decent episode. It allowed for Quark's growth as a character (TNG always depicted the Ferengi poorly, descending into weird stereotypes with slight flirtations with anti-Semitism). Some of the cast may have questioned their career choices though, skipping along to a nursery rhyme.

[Spockydog]

Jesus, that Carol Kane character is gonna wreck every scene she's in.

[SpaceChampion]

17 hours ago, Werthead said:

The biggest weakness I found was its episodic nature. Very strong story arcs like Worf's Klingon troubles, the Marquis/Cardassian stuff in the last two seasons, the Romulan arc from Seasons 3 to 5 and the Borg storyline all whither due to a lack of attention. If given more time and attention, they could have resulted in many more great episodes whilst ejecting scores of meh-to-awful standalone episodes. It's also odd to have so many interesting characters apparently just hanging on the ship but being seen rarely (Keiko and Miles O'Brien, Ensign Ro, Ensigns Gomez and Lefler, Dr. Selar etc) because the message at the time was that continuity was poison.

I was just thinking about how weird it would be to watch another Trials and Tribblelations type of time-travelling insert of current cast to something i saw in first run, ie. a TNG episode.   But it would be amusing to see time travelling Phillipa Georgiou on a Section 31 mission going back in time to make sure none of that turns in arcs.  "Whatever you do, don't let Picard stick with a plotline for more than 2 episodes!  Worf gets 3, but that's it!  The timeline depends on it!"

But that brings up the question: which awful or meh TNG episode would be improved by having later cast (Jack Crusher, Captain Seven and Raffi for instance) in the background trying to prevent things from falling apart?

 

Edited June 19, 2023 by SpaceChampion

[DaveSumm]

2 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

I was just thinking about how weird it would be to watch another Trials and Tribblelations type of time-travelling insert of current cast to something i saw in first run, ie. a TNG episode.  

The difference here is, everything ENT and before didn’t change the aesthetic. However different the NX-01 and the 1701 and the D looked, the idea was that that they all actually looked like that. By the time Trials and Tribbilations came around, we’d already seen Scotty make a holographic bridge of the original Enterprise on TNG.

It just couldn’t work for Pike to visit that bridge, they’ve retconned the look too much.

[SpaceChampion]

Huh?  Wasn't at all talking about the aethetics of how it looks.

[Werthead]

13 hours ago, IlyaP said:

How do you manage to do this? Like, are you doing other things while it's playing in the background? Or are you plonked down on your couch watching each and every episode? I'm in awe of people who have the attention span to watch what effectively amounts to 178 (give or take?) hours of a program. (I have awful ADHD, which makes such endeavours anxiety-inducing.)

They're 44 minutes each, so they only (cough) work out at 130 hours.

I watch an episode in the morning before work, one during my lunch hour, one during dinner (sometimes having one on whilst preparing dinner, which can amount to a full episode or half of one depending on what I'm cooking). I then time it so I watch one episode before bed. All being well, I can watch at least 4 and sometimes 5-6 episodes a day whilst also working and doing other stuff in the evening (blogging, freelance work, playing video games).

You have to be kind of disciplined about it, and have the mindset of not caring if you're going to finish an episode in that sitting or not. Doing that you can get through one of these mega-long shows relatively quickly, although it still took me the better part of two months.

29 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

The difference here is, everything ENT and before didn’t change the aesthetic. However different the NX-01 and the 1701 and the D looked, the idea was that that they all actually looked like that. By the time Trials and Tribbilations came around, we’d already seen Scotty make a holographic bridge of the original Enterprise on TNG.

It just couldn’t work for Pike to visit that bridge, they’ve retconned the look too much.

For the original show, sure. But Picard Season 3 makes it clear that the TNG-era shows are still fair game, by recreating the Enterprise-D bridge exactly as it appeared in 1987.

Also, Picard adds to the confusion by depicting a TOS-era Constitution-class exactly as it looked in TOS, not the SNW version of the ship.

[RumHam]

Man Star Trek V was even worse than I remembered. 

Undiscovered Country was a good send-off. Though parts of it work a lot better if you just pretend Valaris is Saavik.

Fuckin Roddenberry man. Thanks for creating the franchise I like, but every time I hear one of your ideas or mandates it is a terrible idea. "I know, lets not allow our characters to have interpersonal conflicts!" like what the fuck. 

[Derfel Cadarn]

16 minutes ago, RumHam said:

Man Star Trek V was even worse than I remembered. 

Undiscovered Country was a good send-off. Though parts of it work a lot better if you just pretend Valaris is Saavik.

Fuckin Roddenberry man. Thanks for creating the franchise I like, but every time I hear one of your ideas or mandates it is a terrible idea. "I know, lets not allow our characters to have interpersonal conflicts!" like what the fuck. 

Star Trek VI pretty much killed Roddenberry. Officially he liked it. According to Shatner and Nimoy, he hated it and was reaching out to lawyers to pull it when he died. 

Voyage Home is one of the greatest movies ever, Trek or otherwise.

[RumHam]

Wow he really thought he could get the finished movie shelved? Weird. Another way he was head of his time I guess...

[Toth]

8 minutes ago, RumHam said:

Man Star Trek V was even worse than I remembered. 

Just earlier today I read Isaac Asimov's "review" of the script Roddenberry showed to him. Yeah, the core premise is... mindboggingly stupid, though admittedly I really liked the shore leave scenes fleshing out the friendships of the main cast.

10 minutes ago, RumHam said:

Undiscovered Country was a good send-off. Though parts of it work a lot better if you just pretend Valaris is Saavik.

No! Just no! Leave Saavik out of this plot. She... may not have been much of a character in her movies either, but I just don't find it plausible to have her be a villain. Granted, her positions didn't feel quite right for a Vulkan to have altogether...

12 minutes ago, RumHam said:

Fuckin Roddenberry man. Thanks for creating the franchise I like, but every time I hear one of your ideas or mandates it is a terrible idea. "I know, lets not allow our characters to have interpersonal conflicts!" like what the fuck. 

The man had quite a number of glaring flaws, but I must say, I don't understand the recent bile thrown at this specific commandment. Why? Just because current Trek showrunners like to shit on it to rationalize why Starfleet bridge officers snarking at each other like catty spiteful teenagers is somehow good television? Without this specific commandment TNG wouldn't be the competence porn it was. I... really loved that about it and wished so much modern Trek shows could just go back to that formula. I suppose SNW does, mostly. I take that every day in order to avoid shallow soap opera drama.

4 minutes ago, RumHam said:

Wow he really thought he could get the finished movie shelved? Weird. Another way he was head of his time I guess...

Well, Towards the end of his life he was acting and speaking like in some weird daze, as if he wasn't quite there (and I suppose his alcohol and drug problems were a large part of the problem). I like to picture him as some rambling stoner that everyone nodded at and then ignored at this stage.

[RumHam]

18 minutes ago, Toth said:

Just earlier today I read Isaac Asimov's "review" of the script Roddenberry showed to him. Yeah, the core premise is... mindboggingly stupid, though admittedly I really liked the shore leave scenes fleshing out the friendships of the main cast.

No! Just no! Leave Saavik out of this plot. She... may not have been much of a character in her movies either, but I just don't find it plausible to have her be a villain. Granted, her positions didn't feel quite right for a Vulkan to have altogether...

The man had quite a number of glaring flaws, but I must say, I don't understand the recent bile thrown at this specific commandment. Why? Just because current Trek showrunners like to shit on it to rationalize why Starfleet bridge officers snarking at each other like catty spiteful teenagers is somehow good television? Without this specific commandment TNG wouldn't be the competence porn it was. I... really loved that about it and wished so much modern Trek shows could just go back to that formula. I suppose SNW does, mostly. I take that every day in order to avoid shallow soap opera drama.

Well, Towards the end of his life he was acting and speaking like in some weird daze, as if he wasn't quite there (and I suppose his alcohol and drug problems were a large part of the problem). I like to picture him as some rambling stoner that everyone nodded at and then ignored at this stage.

I think it lands better if it's Saavik, a character we know and care about. Even parts of the script feel leftover from that like when she brings up the murder of Kirk's son, which Saavik witnessed. She at least has a history with the Klingons, and cried when Spock died showing she does have emotions. The betrayal doesn't hit as hard when it's a new character.  I think the fans attachment to the character is exactly why it should have been her. 

I think there's a middle ground between early TNG when the "no conflict" rule was in effect and weak drama of some of the newer shows. Like DS9 and to a lesser extent later TNG allowed interpersonal conflict among the crews without it going over the top.