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counterfeitsaint posted:TNG, once it hit its stride, is very consistent. Some episodes are better than others of course, but I can't think of any real stinkers beyond Season 3. Sub Rosa and Genesis for starters. If you think season 7 is also cheating, there's Aquiel, Menage a Troi, Man of the People, Captain's Holiday... Fighting Trousers posted:Yeah, very few TNG episodes will have you yelling "what the gently caress" at your TV, but it's also possible to enter a TNG fugue state where the technobabble and soothing beige carpet just wash over you. Sir Lemming posted:TNG is massively a product of its time. ... when the crazy sci-fi concept of the week just isn't very interesting, the characters aren't quite deep enough to carry it the way they could on DS9. These are more where I land. The default TNG episode is quite a bit more bland and boring than the default DS9 episode, so the bad DS9 episodes stand out more because they're so much worse than the default.
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Mar 26, 2024 13:54
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disaster pastor posted:Sub Rosa and Genesis for starters. If you think season 7 is also cheating, there's Aquiel, Menage a Troi, Man of the People, Captain's Holiday... Imagine hating Menage a Troi or Captain's Holiday. Just admit you don't like romance eps dude
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Mar 26, 2024 14:01
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I just vibe more with the average episode of TNG.
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Mar 26, 2024 14:12
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No Dignity posted:Imagine hating Menage a Troi or Captain's Holiday. Just admit you don't like romance eps dude Romance episodes are good! I like Half a Life, I like Attached, I like when the show implies that these people have lives and feelings besides "being the best Starfleet officer I can be." But Captain's Holiday's romance is all cliched poo poo done semi-adequately, and the main entry in Patrick Stewart openly rejecting Picard's characterization in favor of fighting and loving, and Menage is the embodiment of the TNG half of the "Some Ferengi Nonsense" meme. You can replace them with Masks and The Loss if you want.
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Mar 26, 2024 14:12
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F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:It bears mentioning that early TNG is over 30 years old at this point (yes, we're old). It's about as old now as TOS was when we were growing up in the 1990s.
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Mar 26, 2024 14:12
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Gotta be honest, I gave up on DS9 before the end of season 2. So many episodes I just could not get myself to care about. I found that overall there were just so many like...scenes or emotional beats that were missing. Like that episode where the cardassian boy was raised by a bajoran couple, the DS9 guys decide that he should go with his "real" father and you never hear from his adoptive parents again, they just disappear because now the episode is about some Gul Dukat plot and the actual emotions of being a cardassian raised by people your race oppressed don't mater any more. This is something TNG did quite well honestly, they always knew to have a little scene or bit of dialog that really helped to tie up a lot of the threads by the end. There were some great episodes, don't get me wrong. Like Duet is amazing, one of my personal favourites was Shadow Play, but it just didn't gel with me the same way TNG did.
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Mar 26, 2024 14:15
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I found “Ménage à Troi” (and Lwaxana episodes in general) harder to watch when i was a kid and afraid of being embarrassed by my own clown rear end parents. I still think she’s kind of hit and miss, i think they assumed “horny old lady=innate comedy” too often and forgot to make her actually fun. That said the ending of “Ménage” with Stewart and Barrett hamming at each other is one of the funniest scenes in TNG.
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Mar 26, 2024 14:16
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Masks is good.
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Mar 26, 2024 14:16
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thotsky posted:Masks is good. Speaking of Masks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PautCLWj1Hg
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Mar 26, 2024 14:32
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Yea I think that TNG has a lot more sorta drab beige episodes. If you look over the IMDB scores for most seasons of DS9/TNG you'll find DS9 falls closer to a 7 for a boring episode and TNG tends to be a 6 and I kinda see that. A boring DS9 is still interesting because of the characters and possible development but a boring TNG episode can geniunely just be skipped without missing anything at all. Also watching TNG right now has made me come back to what I thought as a kid when I was watching it - that Picard is kind of a dick. Really dismissive to people who he thinks are below him.
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Mar 26, 2024 14:40
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“Genesis” is a rad episode sorry.
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Mar 26, 2024 14:41
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Arivia posted:“Genesis” is a rad episode sorry. It’s got its good points for sure but has to have one of the lamest reset button endings in all of Trek. It was all fixed between scenes and Troi is like “yuk yuk yuk I better clear out my calendar so I can deal with Barclays brain problems”. Who wrote this poo poo lol, her boyfriend turned into a mix of Alien and Predator, tried to eat her, melted Crushers face off and killed a fellow bridge officer by smashing his spine! Taear posted:Also watching TNG right now has made me come back to what I thought as a kid when I was watching it - that Picard is kind of a dick. Really dismissive to people who he thinks are below him. Picard comes off really badly as a commander in a few episodes of late TNG. I’m thinking of “Lower Decks” and “Preemptive Strike” in both of which he bullies and manipulates a young female subordinate into taking a one-way trip into enormous danger. Actually almost all the senior staff come off as assholes in “Lower Decks”, the only one who seems like he cares about his people is, ironically, Worf. At least until he mutates into a fiend and smashes your spine. skasion fucked around with this message at 14:58 on Mar 26, 2024 |
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Mar 26, 2024 14:53
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Maybe Picard is racist against Bajoran women specifically. Let's see:
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Mar 26, 2024 15:07
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"Menage a Troi" has more than enough good parts to make up for its weaknesses. But most other Troi episodes -- specifically the "Troi falls in love with a diplomat and gets mind-raped" ones, which somehow are indeed a whole category -- are soul-crushingly boring at best. I won't go to bat for "Captain's Holiday" though, that one really felt like Patrick Stewart wanting to spice things up on a show that's allergic to spice. It's a bit of dumb fun I guess, but it's been done so much better. Those weird little genre excursions work much better on DS9.
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Mar 26, 2024 15:15
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Enterprise notes: Forge and Awakening were quite good. Daedulus was watchable. Observer Effect was a neat little bottle episode. Might be my favorite of the bunch.
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Mar 26, 2024 15:29
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feedmyleg posted:I just vibe more with the average episode of TNG. Hell, same
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Mar 26, 2024 15:47
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I was about to rag on folks talking about the general high quality of TNG by bringing up "Pen Pals," when I decided I should check to make sure which season that steaming pile of poo poo was: S2 E15...wait...memory unlocked...that was the episode that made me bin TNG for like a year and a half. It's all good, though. I decided to give it another try down the line. I watch for a couple of hours, and I rave about it to a friend before class the next day. There are these weird black-clad cyborgs menacing the Federation! They're headed to Earth! They kidnap Picard! Riker in command! To be continued! Awesome music! I almost change the channel, but it continues! The doomsday weapon doesn't work! Daring rescue! "Your final report, Mr. Data."! Last-minute save! He looks at me disgustedly. "You mean you quit watching Trek and only picked it back up last night?" I thought he was going to punch me. "Most of us have been waiting six months to find out what happened in that two-parter, and you just waltz in and watch it," he says, shaking his head. So I suppose I should really like "Pen Pals"; it let me fast-forward on a lot of season 2 and all of 3 to get to the best part of it.
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Mar 26, 2024 16:09
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If I could make one sweeping change to TNG, it would be to get rid of the Betazoid empathy/mind reading stuff (its obvious that the writers were not good at working around it when it would ruin their plot and made Troi seem incompetent instead), and then change Troi's position to something like diplomatic officer, or first contact specialist, or xenopsychologist, or whatever you want to call it. Her role should have been trying to work out the rules around the brand new cultures they encounter - she does this anyway, and the ship runs into enough new stuff that it would make sense for a bridge officer to be dedicated to it. She could even still have a role as a counselor since she would have a background in the psychology of many different cultures. And without having to write around the telepathy stuff she could get stuff wrong without being an idiot, it's a hard task, and wouldn't get mind-raped so much.
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Mar 26, 2024 16:43
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Nessus posted:One of the things I thought was interesting when I was watching a bunch of it in a chunk with a friend a few years ago, is that DS9 starts integrating computer graphics (mostly for... computer readouts and graphics, of course) in a way that TNG did not seem to, other than, I suppose, some Video Toaster stuff for space battles. For readouts and graphics, TNG did occasionally, but it was much more complex, since for the most part moving stuff was bluescreened onto the consoles. Stuff like this https://i.imgur.com/Nm6W1Gf.mp4 Or even just them sitting around at the back consoles reading a databank entry like this, would largely be bluescreen.  DS9 being later could set things up with integrated flat-front CRTs where they could have readout loops running in the background. TNG could've started to do that in the last few seasons, I suppose, but the sets were already designed, and it wasn't really possible to put a CRT inside those big flat black-glass bridge stations. Cardassian consoles were specifically set up to be able to hide CRTs. MikeJF fucked around with this message at 17:13 on Mar 26, 2024 |
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Mar 26, 2024 17:10
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CPColin posted:Maybe Picard is racist against Bajoran women specifically. Let's see: Also the first thing he does after seeing again Ro for the first time in 25 years is pull a gun on her and scream at her about how much she sucks 
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Mar 26, 2024 17:16
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MikeJF posted:DS9 being later could set things up with integrated flat-front CRTs where they could have readout loops running in the background. TNG could've started to do that in the last few seasons, I suppose, but the sets were already designed, and it wasn't really possible to put a CRT inside those big flat black-glass bridge stations. Cardassian consoles were specifically set up to be able to hide CRTs. I remember reading somewhere that all the way back in TOS, they originally wanted to rear-project short film loops (readouts, gauges, etc.) onto all those screens around the circumference of the bridge, above each station. The problem was that the union rules of the time hadn't been written with that sort of effect in mind, so they'd have needed to have a union projectionist on set... and not just one projectionist, but one for each screen. There was no chance of finding the budget for that, so all those screens usually just displayed static images of pretty space stuff.
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Mar 26, 2024 17:23
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Yeah, when Jeffries designed the bridge the idea was that those upper screens were all aimed at the captain's chair and would reflect the basic readouts and status of the station below for him to be able to glance at.
MikeJF fucked around with this message at 17:47 on Mar 26, 2024 |
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Mar 26, 2024 17:42
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Powered Descent posted:I remember reading somewhere that all the way back in TOS, they originally wanted to rear-project short film loops (readouts, gauges, etc.) onto all those screens around the circumference of the bridge, above each station. The problem was that the union rules of the time hadn't been written with that sort of effect in mind, so they'd have needed to have a union projectionist on set... and not just one projectionist, but one for each screen. There was no chance of finding the budget for that, so all those screens usually just displayed static images of pretty space stuff. I know I've heard a story somewhere that they did that for some TMP scenes, but the racket of half-a-dozen projectors meant nobody could hear stage directions and the dialog had to be overdubbed later. Mecha fucked around with this message at 08:39 on Mar 27, 2024 |
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Mar 26, 2024 17:47
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Atlas Hugged posted:Enterprise notes: Forge and Awakening were quite good. Daedulus was watchable. Observer Effect was a neat little bottle episode. Might be my favorite of the bunch. Observer Effect is one of my favorite episodes of ENT period. Figures it was a Reeves-Stevens joint. They wrote some of the best parts of Season 4.
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Mar 26, 2024 18:40
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Taear posted:If you look over the IMDB scores bro
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Mar 26, 2024 22:21
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Atlas Hugged posted:Enterprise notes: Forge and Awakening were quite good. Daedulus was watchable. Observer Effect was a neat little bottle episode. Might be my favorite of the bunch. The main thing I remember about this stretch is that Daedulus was the bad "origins of the transporter" episode and notable because Enterprise S4 did a mid season hiatus and that was it's return episode - the weak but steady ratings promptly cratered. Just some really bad timing for something teetering on the brink.
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Mar 26, 2024 22:46
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Daedalus feels like one of those TNG episodes with a misguided scientist trying to fix his mistake. They had like 10 of those across the run of that show, minimum.
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Mar 27, 2024 00:27
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FlamingLiberal posted:Daedalus feels like one of those TNG episodes with a misguided scientist trying to fix his mistake. They had like 10 of those across the run of that show, minimum. It's exactly this, but it doesn't lean hard enough into the desperation of the father. Sure, a crewmember dies, but it's more out of ignorance than him putting the life of his son over the life of the crew. Plus, it's a missed opportunity to lean into the superstitions of the crew regarding the transporter. Early season 1 did a fine job of setting up how nervous everyone was about the technology, and I think the rumor of people disappearing when first transported was meant to be the origin story of this episode, but they never make the link. Sure, it's there if you notice it, but the crew blames the Barrens, not the transporter experiments, for the anomaly. This should have been a horror episode with everyone freaking out and panicking and weird rear end haunted house poo poo happening the whole time. Go nuts with T'Pol feeling what she mistakes for a katra (connecting to her reading of the works of Surak!). Something. Anything. It was so slow that I assumed it was going to be a two-parter, but it was ultimately just a really mediocre episode.
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Mar 27, 2024 02:12
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The two lines in "Relics" where Scotty tries to save the other officer before acknowledging he's gone and mourning him as a 'good lad' has more emotional impact than forty-five minutes of "Daedalus" doing the same story.
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Mar 27, 2024 04:19
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I still remember when the episode titles got leaked and people on trekbbs thought "Daedalus" would be about the first ball ship lmao
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Mar 27, 2024 05:10
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CPColin posted:Maybe Picard is racist against Bajoran women specifically. Let's see:
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Mar 27, 2024 06:22
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It's kind of wild that Reg Barclay gets more character focus episodes in the last few seasons of Voyager that B'lanna, Chakotay or Harry
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Mar 27, 2024 13:13
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McSpanky posted:bro They're a pretty good indicator you know, at least with older stuff - especially stuff that was broadcast before IMDB existed. If an episode is a high 8 or a 9 you're know you're in for something good
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Mar 27, 2024 16:30
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No Dignity posted:It's kind of wild that Reg Barclay gets more character focus episodes in the last few seasons of Voyager that B'lanna, Chakotay or Harry
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Mar 27, 2024 17:46
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FlamingLiberal posted:Reg is way more interesting than any of those characters And way way better acted. I grew up knowing Dwight Schultz from TNG and the first time I saw the A-Team I couldn't believe it was him. Hell, I'd say after Patrick Stewart he's probably the best actor in TNG (easy) and maybe the entire franchise (not counting movie villains like Christopher Plummer or Tom Hardy). The Nth Degree wouldn't be as great of an episode as it is if the actor couldn't pull off the Flowers for Algernon transformation, and Schultz just crushes it. Those two contrasting Shakespeare scenes are so good. Eason the Fifth fucked around with this message at 18:56 on Mar 27, 2024 |
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Mar 27, 2024 18:53
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FlamingLiberal posted:Reg is way more interesting than any of those characters That's on the Voyager writers for making them boring. Literally every script Harry gets in the back half of the show is 'I'm a gay worthless loser but I'm going to do one interesting thing before going back to yelling "impulse engines are offline!" for the rest of the season'
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Mar 27, 2024 18:59
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No Dignity posted:That's on the Voyager writers for making them boring. Whoa there don't try and foist Harry on the gay community. That man's sexual psyche is so screwed up he's too weird to even qualify as queer. Countless lives were saved by Harry spending his twenties 70,000 light years away from all the easily stranglable young Risa tourists of every gender.
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Mar 27, 2024 19:03
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Harry's one character trait is that he's the stickman of Voyager
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Mar 27, 2024 19:19
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MikeJF posted:For readouts and graphics, TNG did occasionally, but it was much more complex, since for the most part moving stuff was bluescreened onto the consoles. Stuff like this This is cool. I feel like the early-on ones you can really tell they're real screens are like TNG Naked Now where the computer readout is monochrome. I don't recall that happening much more often in the show.
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Mar 27, 2024 19:41
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Eason the Fifth posted:And way way better acted. I grew up knowing Dwight Schultz from TNG and the first time I saw the A-Team I couldn't believe it was him. Cyrano de Bergerac isn’t Shakespeare. I have no idea who did write it tbh, but it can’t be Shakespeare bc 1) he’s French 2) the real Cyrano lived after Shakespeare was dead.
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Mar 27, 2024 20:06
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