The Star Trek Thread, 3.0

Makeshift Python wrote:

More HD screencaps of TNG S1: http://tng.trekcore.com/bluray/index.html#news1fx

Holy fuck. Down the road, when I can get 'em cheap, I may get seasons 3, 4, and 5.

TNG: "Symbiosis"

HEY GENE, WE'RE DOING A SHOW ABOUT DRUGS.


"Fuck yeah! I love drugs!"

NO, IT'S A REALLY PREACHY 80's EPISODE THAT SAYS "DRUGS ARE BAD".


"... Do you have any drugs?"

LOL@ Denise Crosby waves bye bye.

The White Tuxedo wrote:

TNG: "Symbiosis"

LOL@ Denise Crosby waves bye bye.

Best part of the whole episode.

Don't laugh (well, you can if you want to, I can't hear you from here), but SYMBIOSIS was, along with HEART OF GLORY, my only 'fave' from season 1. Mainly because it had that downer ending, which to me echoed PRIVATE LITTLE WAR in terms of futility. It took the curse off all the 'just say no' stuff that was leaking all over the episode, and really pointed a way for them to explore stuff without necessarily providing pat answers after 42min and 20sec.

Man, I wish they had put as much effort into the HD TOS release.

Fairbairn-Sykes wrote:

Man, I wish they had put as much effort into the HD TOS release.

Shit, I wouldn't mind full-on new effects for TNG. Big CGI space battles 'n shit. I know some here prefer model work, and I generally do. But I think CGI gives a lot more freedom to these shows if done tastefully. They could at least fill out the Wolf 359 debris field with different kinds of ships.

TNG: "Skin of Evil"

Not the worst episode I've seen, but I wish Yar had died to save the ship or something. And I just am not on board with the crying party at the end. We should have been left with no words from this vibrant young woman. Instead, we get some recorded hologram from her that I don't believe she would have made in universe.

The ending almost works only because of Ron Jones. But yeah, we never see these holographic recordings of anyone else in the whole franchise so it's really awkward. What's worse is that her holographic recording is probably her biggest scene in the whole series by that point, showing how she got the least development of all the characters. Like in "Hide and Q" she never gets a wish granted, in "Coming of Age" she doesn't get interviewed, she often got neglected so I can't blame Crosby for not being happy about only standing around on the bridge saying "hailing frequencies open" or like in ARSENAL just shooting shit.

Also doesn't help that the funeral takes place in a shitty soundstage and is partly bluescreen. It looks so cheap.

I do kinda of like the idea of Yar getting killed off so early in the game, so you get to feel the shock the characters have when it happens and when Crusher is desperately trying to revive her futilely. Wish it were handled better.

Yeah, the funeral puts a lie to the whole idea of Tasha Yar as a character. Suddenly she's a bigger deal than she ever was. It's far more about Denise Crosby leaving than Tasha dying.

That being said, I like her death. I like that it's a sudden "red shirt" style death for the security chief. And I actually like the character of Armus, too. This lonely, malignant, evil.

But yeah, Tasha actually seemed like she could've been very interesting if anyone had bothered to scratch beneath the surface.

Fairbairn-Sykes wrote:

It's far more about Denise Crosby leaving than Tasha dying.

That's the feeling I always get watching that, especially with Sirtis crying because they were best friends on set (which is a shame that the writers didn't take advantage of that).

Fairbairn-Sykes wrote:

But yeah, Tasha actually seemed like she could've been very interesting if anyone had bothered to scratch beneath the surface.

The most development she ever got (not counting "Yesterday's Enterprise) was probably "Legacy", despite being completely absent.

The thing is -- would it be worth keeping Tasha if it meant losing all of Worf's development?

S1 TNG cast is a mess. I mean, you've got the pompous Captain and the hero XO (seriously judging from S1 Riker comes off as the lead of the show -- in another universe TNG would've made total sense as a hero's journey show for Riker where he takes command of the Enterprise when Picard dies) -- but beyond those two the cast is a mess in that first season. Once you moved LaForge to Engineering and Worf to tactical it was like "duh!" but it still took til S6 for Troi to earn her keep.

Fairbairn-Sykes wrote:

But yeah, Tasha actually seemed like she could've been very interesting if anyone had bothered to scratch beneath the surface.

When I originally went through TNG I said that what the show lacked was an active woman after Yar died. It left "weepy Troi" and "valium Beverly". Pulaski was fun, but she wasn't going out and kicking any ass. Basically what TNG needed was a Kara Thrace without the adjustment problem. Ro Laren (even with the adjustment problem) is EX-FUCKING-ACTLY what TNG needed, and it's one of the bigger tragedies of Berman Era Trek (talk about tragedy) that Forbes didn't wanna be a part of the franchise.

TNG: "We'll Always Have Paris"

-A bit maudlin.
-Michelle Phillips was hot.
-Troi is obnoxious by messing with people's personal business.
-Dr. whatever is weird.
-Does any of this matter? I mean, they meet in holoParis, but did Picard grow as a character in this episode?

Fairbairn-Sykes wrote:

The thing is -- would it be worth keeping Tasha if it meant losing all of Worf's development?

Exactly. I'd rather have Worf on tactical. I don't even know what the fuck he does in S1. I'd imagine the tactical post and the actual security chief position would ideally be two jobs.

If only Ro Laren had been introduced a bit sooner and stayed. She shares a lot with Yar in terms of coming from the school of hard knocks, plus she wouldn't start out as perfectly adjusted. Yar only has the backstory, Ro would have the opportunity for development.

The dynamic in later seasons definitely would have been dramatically different had Crosby not quit. I think what really served the characters greatly was when Michael Piller stepped in and said "THIS SHOW IS ABOUT THESE PEOPLE!". With Piller running the show I think we still would have gotten some quality character stories with Tasha in the mix.

I think Worf still would have found his place. "Heart of Glory" was the shape of things to come for his character, relief officer or security chief. Geordi seemed destined to be chief engineer, like in "The Last Outpost" where he's given a scene where he runs engineering and he comes off very natural (though I gotta say, where the fuck was the chief? Did they run out of money to cast a chief of the week? lol)

Either Ro should've stayed or Shelby should've stayed.

Here's my main beef with Berman-era Trek -- why do an ensemble show if the characters are just pieces to be moved around the board in service of solving the technobabble problem of the week?

Look at Phlox on ENT. Here's there because they need a Doctor character and an Alien character.

Compare this to TOS. TOS had, when it started, two stars, Shatner and Nimoy. Kelley quickly joined their ranks. Doohan became iconic in his own way as well. But their roles grew in size as they proved themselves as actors and characters, naturally developing as the writers enjoyed using them.

The TNG and VOY characters feel pre-planned and forced, and very strictly defined by their Writer's Guide profiles.

Hell, look at Mayweather on ENT. You forget the guy exists half the time.

They considered dropping Troi at one point in S1 and I think the only reason they didn't was that after Crosby chose to leave they realized they couldn't axe another woman.

An ideal TNG cast would be something like:
Captain Picard -- who either dies in BOBW or is promoted to Commodore in Redemption (with his flag on Enterprise)
Commander Riker -- who when Picard dies or is promoted becomes Captain of the Enterprise
Data
Chief Engineer LaForge
Dr. Beverly, but a little feistier and with a more pronounced relationship with Picard (for some reason Joan/Roger comes to mind, dunno why, very OOC for Jean-Luc)
Ro at the conn
Worf at tactical

That's how it should've been from the start.

That's it. No kid, no Troi. Or maybe yes to a Wesley like character if you must, but the best part of that character was the whole Young Horatio Hornblower aspect of watching this kid develop into an officer -- similar to the appeal of Nog on DS9. It was never that he was gee whiz science prodigy. And hell, if you're gonna give the Crushers and Picard an intriguing tragic backstory, don't F***IN wait til season 5 to use it and then only barely. Troi was never a necessary character. She never really contributed as a counselor except in a prefunctory manner, her relationship with Riker was largely ignored so he could bang women of the week, and her empathic powers were nonsense half the time and useless the rest.

TNG was a show where every character got a longwinded backstory and only Data and Worf's were ever really explored.

Fairbairn-Sykes wrote:

Either Ro should've stayed or Shelby should've stayed.

Here's my main beef with Berman-era Trek -- why do an ensemble show if the characters are just pieces to be moved around the board in service of solving the technobabble problem of the week?

Look at Phlox on ENT. Here's there because they need a Doctor character and an Alien character.

Compare this to TOS. TOS had, when it started, two stars, Shatner and Nimoy. Kelley quickly joined their ranks. Doohan became iconic in his own way as well. But their roles grew in size as they proved themselves as actors and characters, naturally developing as the writers enjoyed using them.

The TNG and VOY characters feel pre-planned and forced, and very strictly defined by their Writer's Guide profiles.

Hell, look at Mayweather on ENT. You forget the guy exists half the time.

Pardon my repeating the joke, but I always call Mayweather "Invisible Man".

Pardon my mentioning this too... Well, I'm letting the idea just kinda percolate in my mind to see if I can think it through. But my FIRST FRONTIER (alternative to ENTERPRISE) thing. I'm seeing if I can come up with a cast of characters not defined by their jobs but by who they are before they got those jobs. I've got five people I think, but they can change. It's a neat challenge.

This guy posted "Sins of the Father" and "The Inner Light" in HD. Not as impressive as blu-ray but they give you an idea of how good TNG-R will look.

Damn.

TNG: "Conspiracy"

If nothing else it's a fun episode. I love the idea of Star Trek meets BODY SNATCHERS. I'm sure something like "Homefront"/"Paradise Lost" would have been UNTHINKABLE at that time, so the only way to see Starfleet peeps shooting at each other was if some alien influence was involved.

More could have been done with the idea. You could shamelessly rip off THE THING and BODY SNATCHERS and I wouldn't mind a bit. Sadly we never saw the Evil Space Lobsters again.

I do think this would have been a more fitting season finale.

EDIT ADDON: I KNEW it was that guy from GOONIES!

Also, I just read up on what happened with the Evil Space Lobsters in the books and it sounds F***IN' stupid.

Yeah, that whjole storyline is part in parcel with the great Ezri character assassination

I just think of them as the proto-Borg, before the TNG writers realized how these kind of creatures were not going to work given the show's budget.

TNG: "The Neutral Zone"

It has two stories that merited their own episodes and don't even complement each other that are simply squashed together and done badly. They should have saved the cryo story for S2. It would have been better than "Shade of Gray". Though Picard sitting on the john and taking a 45-minute shit reading Dickens would have been better than "Shades of Gray".

Never in the franchise, that I can think of, have the main characters of a Trek show been written as such repulsive assholes. GOOD LORD. sfdebris sums this up better from what I can recall of his review. The arrogance of some of these characters is taken to absurd heights in this episode. I was literally appalled at what Riker was saying in his scene in the corridor with Data.

Postives include seeing the name "Marc Alaimo" in the credits, and hearing Ron Jones' score... minus the shitkicker music.

Lackluster end to an extremely rocky season. The Romulans are back. Not that they do too much for a while on the show. I'd love to see them swoop in and knock these assholes down a peg, but it's on to Troi getting pregers.

The White Tuxedo wrote:

I was literally appalled at what Riker was saying in his scene in the corridor with Data.

And it doesn't even make sense too with the rest of the episode because he actually looks like he's enjoying their company, and before the warp off he regrets that they can't stay. I highly suspect the corridor scene was tacked in by Roddenberry himself during a rewrite, it just comes off like some incoherent rant of his rather than Riker's.

Here's the thing -- the cryo frozen humans are US. They are the TNG audience. And it's an entire episode that literally features the characters of the show condescending and talking down to the audience.