Star Trek

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Sparky Prime
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Re: Star Trek

Post by Sparky Prime »

andersonh1 wrote:- everyone is genuinely amazed by the holodeck and the visuals it can create, which is refreshing to see.
I wish Discovery and Enterprise had remembered that. Maybe the holodecks those series featured weren't as advanced as TNG era holodecks, but the visuals still looked real enough. I don't mind that they had holodecks, but they should have made it look less advanced, not as real, to really show the advancement in holo-technology over the years until they reached the realistic visuals of TNG era.
- Q says at one point that the Federation conquered the Klingons. In Heart of Glory when Worf meets two Klingon fugitives, the captain of the Klingon ship that is hunting them has a Federation insignia with Klingon writing, something I don't think we ever saw again.
Yeah, I have to say that's the only time I recall seeing that insignia. Would have been interesting to see where that would have gone had they stuck to it.
- Armin Shimerman (Quark from DS9) is in the first Ferengi episode. Man, the Ferengi are awful in that one.
Its interesting he would be one of the first Ferengi we'd ever see. And he'd play another Ferengi in TNG episode "Peak Performance". It's also interesting the Ferengi were intended to be the new villain race like the Klingons had been for TOS.
- Josh Clark (Joe Carey from Voyager) is in an episode, so one assumes Mr. Carey served on the Enterprise before he was on Voyager.
Josh Clark was in TNG? Well what do you know... Be kinda cool if he was the same character.
- similarly, Colm Meany shows up a couple of times at conn or as security, and he's clearly not O'Brien yet.
I saw an interview on Youtube with him not long ago where he was talking about the development of the character a bit. He said he tried to give the character an American accent at first but Rick Berman wanted him to use his natural accent. He also didn't know who O'Brien was the first time he saw the name on a script since he was just 'non-discript transporter chief' prior to getting an actual name, and obviously prior to that he wasn't even a transporter chief.
- I'm not sure how many chief engineers we go through. Quite a few.
I was curious as to why they didn't have a set chief engineer to start out the series. I know Gene Roddenberry didn't want to have a main engineering set because he didn't think it was necessary, although he was obviously overruled. I don't think it was until Geordi eventually took the position that they had a set chief engineer.
- Tasha Yar is a character that deserved time to develop, and it's a shame they killed her off. She dies like a redshirt though, killed by the alien partway through an episode, as befits a security officer.
Denise Crosby wanted to leave the show because she wasn't happy with how they were developing (or lack of) the character. I think she regretted that decision, seeing how many times she would return as a guest star.
- Wesley Crusher... everyone hated the boy who always saved the ship, but it's down to the writing. Wil Wheaton doesn't make the character particularly annoying, but there are a few too many episodes where the trained, professional, Starfleet explorer adults can't or won't see the danger, while the kid can. Datalore is a prime example.
I never understood the hate for the character personally. I always liked Wesley, and I thought it was a shame they had him leave Starfleet (only to have him back in a Starfleet uniform for Nemesis). But yeah, they did have him save the ship a bit too often, but that had nothing to do with Wil Wheaton, that was the writing.
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JediTricks
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Re: Star Trek

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andersonh1 wrote:On a completely different note, I've been watching season one of TNG for the first time in years, and while some of the episodes are just as bad as I remember, or have some bad moments at least, there are some things I like quite a bit. There are some oddities as well, things that get dropped later on.

- everyone is genuinely amazed by the holodeck and the visuals it can create, which is refreshing to see. And when the holodeck malfunctions in The Big Goodbye, Picard notes that they're fixing the problem at the next starbase layover.
- Q says at one point that the Federation conquered the Klingons. In Heart of Glory when Worf meets two Klingon fugitives, the captain of the Klingon ship that is hunting them has a Federation insignia with Klingon writing, something I don't think we ever saw again.
- Armin Shimerman (Quark from DS9) is in the first Ferengi episode. Man, the Ferengi are awful in that one.
- Josh Clark (Joe Carey from Voyager) is in an episode, so one assumes Mr. Carey served on the Enterprise before he was on Voyager.
- similarly, Colm Meany shows up a couple of times at conn or as security, and he's clearly not O'Brien yet.
- Data isn't quite the Data we know... he's always puzzled by human behavior or imitating badly as a running gag in those early episodes. Picard is much more surly and unapproachable early on, and the fact that he's meant to be French comes up a number of times.
- I'm not sure how many chief engineers we go through. Quite a few.
- Dr. Crusher and Picard flirt a lot. Crusher is an underused character for most of the series, but she gets a lot to do in the first season.
- Tasha Yar is a character that deserved time to develop, and it's a shame they killed her off. She dies like a redshirt though, killed by the alien partway through an episode, as befits a security officer.
- the Riker smirk is already there. Man, that guy is smug.
- there are a LOT of all-powerful, mysterious aliens in the first half of season one when Roddenberry is running the show. Once he steps back a bit, things change somewhat.
- Wesley Crusher... everyone hated the boy who always saved the ship, but it's down to the writing. Wil Wheaton doesn't make the character particularly annoying, but there are a few too many episodes where the trained, professional, Starfleet explorer adults can't or won't see the danger, while the kid can. Datalore is a prime example.

All in all, early TNG is a show still finding its footing. It's very rough around the edges, but not without some quality here and there.
I've found that the first handful of episodes after the pilot are pretty weak, but after the initial scripts are burned through and they get to a working staff that understands the material, it starts to even out and there are actual decent episodes, over half I'd say is decent and some are actually good.

The Ferengi were supposed to have huge genitals, there were a lot of terrible ideas in those early Ferengi episodes that got cast out, but what I liked about them is they're very "other". They're not threatening, but they're quite alien.

Apparently, they wanted multiple chief engineers, almost like department heads, but they thankfully dropped that by season 2 as it was confusing compared to TOS having a singular head of the department.
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andersonh1
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Re: Star Trek

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JediTricks wrote:I've found that the first handful of episodes after the pilot are pretty weak, but after the initial scripts are burned through and they get to a working staff that understands the material, it starts to even out and there are actual decent episodes, over half I'd say is decent and some are actually good.
I'm just about done with season one, and I'd have to agree with you. I watched "Conspiracy" yesterday, and it's a really solid episode that I don't think they ever followed up on. The poorer episodes are generally confined to the first half of the season, and things do start to pick up in the middle and second half. I really enjoyed "Home Soil", "Coming of Age", "Heart of Glory", "The Arsenal of Freedom" and "Conspiracy".
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Sparky Prime
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Re: Star Trek

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The season finale for Discovery aired last night. Haven't seen much about it other than it was apparently pretty lackluster. And at the end they get a distress call from... The Enterprise! Only it's been clearly redesigned. The nacelle struts and the neck are clearly more TMP refit inspired, among other alterations. Oh, and it has a clearly visible viewscreen window...
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Re: Star Trek

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Mervice wrote:I haven't seen the finale yet. I'm saving it for when the second season is about to start to get myself hyped up. But reading that, I don't think it'll hype me up at all lol. I just hope the show gets better by some miracle. I don't want Star Trek show going through a humiliation of being canceled after 2-3 seasons.
Welcome to the boards, Mervice. It's always good to see new members!

I have not seen any of Discovery yet. I may check it out at some point, but I have heard both good and bad, so I'm undecided. I would be interested in seeing Captain Pike given some screen time though. I've always been fascinated by that first Star Trek pilot with Jeffrey Hunter playing Pike, since that's the only glimpse we ever got of that crew, other than Spock.
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Re: Star Trek

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Mervice wrote:I haven't seen the finale yet. I'm saving it for when the second season is about to start to get myself hyped up. But reading that, I don't think it'll hype me up at all lol. I just hope the show gets better by some miracle. I don't want Star Trek show going through a humiliation of being canceled after 2-3 seasons.
That's a very reasonable take, although having better Trek for less time seems in some ways more appealing than watching Voyager for 7 seasons - I'd take 3 seasons of decent Voyager over 7 seasons of middling Voyager. They really need to stop treating Trek like a media franchise and start looking at it as a visionary thing again, someone has to say "this stands for something, and we need characters who embody that." Until then, we get Into Darkness and STD. :(
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Sparky Prime
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Re: Star Trek

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JediTricks wrote:They really need to stop treating Trek like a media franchise and start looking at it as a visionary thing again, someone has to say "this stands for something, and we need characters who embody that." Until then, we get Into Darkness and STD. :(
Yeah, I completely agree. They've been stuck focusing on these 'action plot to stop the villain and/or McGuffin' stories that really doesn't say anything about anything. I was watching a trivia video the other day for Star Trek 4, and it made me realize... When was the last time Star Trek didn't have a villain? I mean, rather than someone/thing the crew had to defeat to save the day, when was the last time they had a plot that saved the day by solving a problem?
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andersonh1
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Re: Star Trek

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Sparky Prime wrote:I mean, rather than someone/thing the crew had to defeat to save the day, when was the last time they had a plot that saved the day by solving a problem?
I agree. I'm still watching through my TNG blu-rays, and reached "Pen Pals" from season 2, which is a nice episode of exactly the type you describe. It's very much an exercise in problem solving. The crew is charting a series of planets that are experiencing unusual geologic activity and trying to figure out why. The problem becomes more complicated when Data answers a transmission from a child on one of the planets, which ultimately makes the main problem of the episode one for the crew to try and decide whether to intervene or not, and why. It's a series of personal dilemmas, with nary a scenery-chewing villain in sight, and I doubt we'd see an episode like this today.
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Re: Star Trek

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The issue with that is it's not "cinematic" usually. You can't sell a few hundred million in tickets on personal growth most of the time, you need to get audiences invested in the grand drama, and that's a lot easier with violence than it is character. I think ST4 speaking to modern issues made the danger global and the villain was man's ignorance, a premise you need VISION to sell, and Trek just sadly doesn't have that. The best Trek films have had personal weight to the characters as well as global or larger threats, but when you don't have characters mean anything, it doesn't matter what you throw against them.
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Re: Star Trek

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More trouble behind the scenes for Discovery, as showrunners, Aaron Harberts and Gretchen J. Berg, are leaving the series. The article points to "operational issues" for the reason Harberts and Berg are leaving rather than creative problems. I've seen other articles saying they'd become abusive to the writing staff and the budget was starting to balloon.

Alex Kurtzman will be the showrunner for the remainder of season 2. This is the second change in showrunners for the series after Bryan Fuller left the series while season 1 was in production.

Also leaving the series is executive producer Akiva Goldsman, who had "a management style and personality that clashed with the writing staff."

Can't say I'm thrilled with Kurtzman being in charge now. Given his writing for the films... I don't think he really gets Star Trek. But at least it sounds like they've gotten rid of a toxic element behind the scenes.
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