Star Trek to return to the small screen.

[jargan83]

Are these on Netflix or "other" means? I had a look at Netflix and couldn't find anything - mind you last time I looked was a couple of weeks ago now.

 

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Are these on Netflix or "other" means? I had a look at Netflix and couldn't find anything - mind you last time I looked was a couple of weeks ago now.

"Other" means.

The last batch of Short Treks turned up on Netflix Australia at the start of Discovery season 2 despite being released months before, so who knows when they'll show up.

 

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For some reason I've started to watch ST:TNG again from the beginning. Normally in the past I'd skip the first two seasons and start at season 3, but I've never watched the 1080p remasters.

Holy shit this show has not aged well. The acting, the sets, the music, the camera direction, it feels a lot older than 30 years. In fact it feels a lot like watching episodes from the original series.

 

[Timbo]

For some reason I've started to watch ST:TNG again from the beginning. Normally in the past I'd skip the first two seasons and start at season 3, but I've never watched the 1080p remasters.

Holy shit this show has not aged well. The acting, the sets, the music, the camera direction, it feels a lot older than 30 years. In fact it feels a lot like watching episodes from the original series.

Mate, I tried Deep Space Nine again recently which I would honestly list as one of the most important shows I think I ever watched growing up in helping establish who I am and it is a slog.

I think in a post-BSG world, there is just too much about sci fri from prior it that handwaves so much of what’s going on. Sci fi shows now have at least an element of realism to them and do their best to maintain continuity. Old Star Trek just didn’t really care.

The worst culprit by far is Voyager. 70 years from the nearest Federation base and we just got the shit blasted out of us by a Kazon battlecruiser? No dramas, we’ll be back to A1 this time next week and the 10 (of 140!) dead crew members don’t matter at all. It’s f**king wild how low the stakes permanently are.

 

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Mate, I tried Deep Space Nine again recently which I would honestly list as one of the most important shows I think I ever watched growing up in helping establish who I am and it is a slog.

I think in a post-BSG world, there is just too much about sci fri from prior it that handwaves so much of what’s going on. Sci fi shows now have at least an element of realism to them and do their best to maintain continuity. Old Star Trek just didn’t really care.

The worst culprit by far is Voyager. 70 years from the nearest Federation base and we just got the shit blasted out of us by a Kazon battlecruiser? No dramas, we’ll be back to A1 this time next week and the 10 (of 140!) dead crew members don’t matter at all. It’s f**king wild how low the stakes permanently are.

I don't think I'll ever watch Voyager again. Once was enough. It always pissed me off that Janeway was happy to get home as slowly as possible and the ship was always in pristine condition. They start out with the premise that the Starfleet crew and Maquis would struggle to work with each other and that was pretty much resolved a few episodes in. Neelix. Kes. Kim. Chakotay. Hands down the worst crew of them all.

Yeah, season 1 and 2 of Deep Space Nine were a bit rough, but this first season of TNG is just f**king atrocious. Data is so f**king inconsistent. The guy can function as a walking dictionary yet in the very first episode he got tripped up by the word snoop. I remember why I never got into it until season 3. It's f**king terrible!

 

[Timbo]

It’s also mad that he has his learning curve throughout TNG.

We establish he went through the academy and rose up the ranks to the point where he was considered worthy of being assigned as third in command of the Federation flagship, and yet he’s essentially functionally autistic until Riker teaches him how to whistle? How has he not learned any of this during his prior years of service between being discovered, going through the academy and working his way up to commander?

There are just so many logical inconsistencies that rely upon you not asking any questions.

 

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Wesley f**king sucks. I mean, really f**king sucks.

People complain about Mary Sue characters, but Wesley would have to be the biggest Mary Sue character ever.

 

[Timbo]

Wesley f**king sucks. I mean, really f**king sucks.

People complain about Mary Sue characters, but Wesley would have to be the biggest Mary Sue character ever.

Yeah, he really does. I’m so glad they took Jake Sisko in the opposite direction.

It is frustrating when you watch TNG that this is allegedly the ship full of the absolute smartest people in the Federation and it’s the 15 year old kid who keeps saving the day.

Also, Geordi is kind of creepy. The stuff he does with the hologram of the ship designer would definitely get him a meeting with HR.

 

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You know who else sucks in the first season? Picard. Dude just comes across as a complete asshat at times.

I thought it was weird how long it took him to recognise his old ship, the USS Stargazer. Super Wesley of course knew it was coming because the brainiac figured out how to improve the ship sensors. But then when Picard becomes aware there's an incoming Federation ship he's like "whatevs!"

Yeah, it was funny how when Geordi gets normal eyes the first thing he does is bust out a line about how beautiful Tasha Yar is when she's a bit of manlet. Where the f**k was Troi?

I slept through the Dixon Hill episode. I f**king hate holodeck episodes.

 

[Timbo]

Riker is also a bit of an arrogant douche in the early episodes.

And do you know who is the absolute worst? Pulaski. She is literally a f**king racist, particularly towards Data, and everyone’s response is just ‘ha ha ha - what a delightful old curmudgeon!’

 

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Data the walking dictionary doesn't know what aphrodisiac means.

lol @ the writing on the show.

Datalore has been the only genuinely good episode so far.

Holy f**k, how bad is Angel One? The gender swap planet was an ok story, but the fact they were on their way to sort out some Romulans who were f**king up shit in the neutral zone and we never get to see any of that made it terrible.

Then when the gender people and virus shit is all sorted Picard is like ok dudes warp 6, after Data had said they'd need to use maximum warp to get there in time.

 

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Just finished off season 1... Wow, what a shitshow.

The positives - There were a handful of decent episodes, namely Datalore, Conspiracy and The Neutral Zone. The latter episode was supposed to be a two parter introducing both the Romulans and the Borg. Thankfully the writers guild strike at the time caused the Borg story to be dropped, which is a good thing because conceptually they weren't in the right place. The Borg were originally thought of as an insectoid race which, given the quality of prosthetic makeup at the time, would have been disastrous. Troi was more bearable than I remembered her being, as was Dr Crusher. It did get better as the season progressed.

The negatives - Holy shit... Where to start? Everything about this show looked cheap and tacky, even for 1987. The sets, the uniforms, the props, everything. Every episode was basically the same - crew encounters some weirdos in a ship/on a planet and lameness ensues. What really caught my eye was how many old fossils (60+ years) were dug up to play bit parts. Most of the main crew were just awful and the overacting worse than Shatner. There's no excuse for Wesley Crusher. None. I could see why Denise Crosby wanted off the show, but what a f**king lame way to kill off a main character. Some of the camera work was shoddy as f**k, particularly some tracking shots where the camera is shaking from side to side, and there was one visual effect shot of the Enterprise flying past the planet of the week that was so poorly framed (half the saucer section is cut off for the whole shot) it's amazing it got used more than once. Q is f**king garbage. I never understood the popularity of the character.

2/10.

 

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Unpopular opinion incoming...

Pulaski > Crusher.

 

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And do you know who is the absolute worst? Pulaski. She is literally a f**king racist, particularly towards Data, and everyone’s response is just ‘ha ha ha - what a delightful old curmudgeon!’

I just got through season 2 (yes, even including Shades of Grey) and I gotta say that I didn't mind Pulaski. There was only the one episode where her prejudice against Data came out, and she got over it pretty quickly. Pulaski was a more dynamic character than Crusher. There was obviously an attempt to replicate the type of banter that Spock and McCoy had in the original series and I thought it worked okay in what was otherwise a sterile atmosphere between crew members.

As for the rest of the show, season 2 was a massive improvement over the first. The planetary adventures with dumb alien races was reduced in favour of more storytelling on the ship itself. The primary and secondary storyline structure was far more prominent, allowing for the fleshing out of supporting characters. Worf's forehead looked a lot less ridiculous and he started getting some amusing lines. Wesley was mostly bearable. The musical score was less abrasive than in the first season, especially when cutting to commercial breaks. The guest cast was much better (and younger), including a smoking hot Teri Hatcher

I used to tell people to skip both seasons, but I don't think season 2 is all that bad to be honest and it really sets up the foundation for the following seasons. Lots of good episodes and a handful of stinkers.

6/10.

 

[Timbo]

Why would you ever watch Shades of Grey. It's comfortably the worst episode of Star Trek ever made. I include Janeway and Paris turning into lizards and Crusher banging a ghost in that assessment.

 

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Why would you ever watch Shades of Grey. It's comfortably the worst episode of Star Trek ever made. I include Janeway and Paris turning into lizards and Crusher banging a ghost in that assessment.

Shades of Grey is peak Star Trek. How could you top the montage of all the alien women Riker banged?

 

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I've smashed my way through seasons 3 and 4 over the last two weeks.

The improvement in production quality over seasons 1 and 2 is phenomenal. Season 2 was already showing signs of better scripts coming out of the writers room, but starting with season 3 there were a few things that changed that made the show much more appealing to the eyes and ears.

Sure, the new uniforms looked much better than the old ones, but what really pulled it off was the changes in the lighting rig design and cinematography. There was a real cheesy hard lighting and deep focus look in the first two seasons, and season 3 saw a change to softer lighting with diffusion and shallower depth of field. The look is far more modern in comparison with today's standards, which is why the first two seasons look so bad when compared to them.

Another change I noticed starting with season 4 was ditching the synth generated background music which always sounded cheesy as f**k.

Moving Geordi to engineering as a great move that gave his character some much needed depth. Worf, Troi and Beverly all got some great bits, though I f**king groan every time Lwaxana appears. The Romulans finally started f**king shit up. The guest actors weren't all old dug up fossils. And Yesterday's Enterprise is still my favourite Star Trek episode of all time.

It was great seeing Andreas Katsulas appear as Romulan Commander Tomalak. He was f**king great as G'Kar in Babylon 5. As a side note, it's somewhat stunning to see how many of the Babylon 5 main cast members have died compared to TNG. All of the TNG main cast are still alive, yet the actors behind Babylon 5's G'Kar, Sinclair, Garibaldi, Franklin, Vir and Zack have all passed away. Though we did lose Nog and Odo recently...

 

[Timbo]

Man, how good was Babylon 5?

I tried re-watching it again a couple of years ago but the effects are just so bad that I couldn’t get going on it despite knowing how amazing the plot is.

 

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Man, how good was Babylon 5?

I tried re-watching it again a couple of years ago but the effects are just so bad that I couldn’t get going on it despite knowing how amazing the plot is.

If Babylon 5 had been properly upscaled to 1080p it would look awesome.

Instead the zoom and crop approach for DVD made the effects look even worse than they were originally in the native 4:3 SD presentation.

Like the original Star Wars trilogy, the best version of it is on VHS.

 

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Time to take another shit on Discovery,

Short Trek - The Girl Who Made the Stars... What a pointless pile of shit. I'm not even sure how this qualifies as Star Trek.

Short Trek - Ephraim and Dot... Member berries mania.