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I didn't get the impression they were going for a 24-style TOUGH MEN MAKING TOUGH CHOICES story. Yeah there was a load of militaristic dick waving, and the end result was an unmitigated disaster for both sides. I think the pilot is very much supposed to be what happens when the Federation forgets its the Federation. As if a brain damaged man mumbling "this isn't who we really are" before getting violently spaced wasn't enough of a clue. If the show actually does come out all jingostic and oo-rah then that scene just becomes cruel and vindictive. So I guess I'm hoping as much as thinking this.
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Sep 27, 2017 13:44
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Looking for Par'Mach in All The Wrong Places is so close to being an amazing episode. I didn't like the romantic longing looks between Miles and Kira at the end - up until that point it all worked as just Miles and Keiko both getting weird and obsessed with looking after Kira, and Kira needing to get the gently caress away before it crossed some boundaries. And Grillka owns, and genuinely has a really fun flirty relationship with Quark in her first appearance, sucks that she barely got to do anything this episode. Dax is always treat, and I'll never get tired of this starfleet nerd secretly being a better Klingon than half the actual Klingons.
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Nov 24, 2019 17:13
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Trials and Tribble-ations continues DS9's streak as The Horniest Trek. I would have liked to see a serious discussion on whether Bashir needed to the nasty in the past-y though.
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Dec 2, 2019 23:38
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Strom Cuzewon posted:Trials and Tribble-ations continues DS9's streak as The Horniest Trek. Oh god the next episode is a pleasure planet, and it turns out Curzon died from snu-snu.
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Dec 3, 2019 18:47
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Dax's relationship with Worf is incredibly dry and boring. Wish they'd leant into how she's a better klingon than he is, that could have been fun to explore. Odo's relationship with the jar of baby space-goop however, was captivating and adorable.
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Dec 16, 2019 17:41
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Quark and Jadzia both have the same solution to any problems with their plots: More Grilka But then any plot would be improved with more Grilka.
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Jan 3, 2020 17:47
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Nessus posted:He had male pattern baldness and Starfleet medicine and Federation culture doesn't consider it disfiguring or a flaw in need of repair. He also had a terrible combover until a large Hungarian man pinned his arms behind his back so his wife could cut it off.
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Jan 6, 2020 12:08
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Why are there no vulcans in DS9? They're never present, and barely ever mentioned. Was there some reason they deliberately avoided them?
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Jan 7, 2020 22:29
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Huh, I had no idea there were so many vulcans in DS9, and so few in tng. Just got up to the end of DS9 s6, and holy hell the thread was right about how awful Jadzia's death is, especially with how a few episodes earlier they had a great episode of her slowly bleeding out and barely surviving. They coulda killed her there, immediately introduced ezri, and properly milked how it totally fucks the greaving process when some random new girl is technically your best friend
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Jan 8, 2020 13:24
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Ghost Leviathan posted:And I can't believe you didn't include Garak Everyone in DS9 is weirdly okay being mates with a war criminal, and are constantly surprised when he commits more war crimes
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Jan 9, 2020 10:59
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Moving from DS9 to TNG, I'm kinda surprised by how funny it is. When I saw snippets as a kid TNG always seemed very serious and po-faced. There's definitely an element of that, but Picard is surprisingly playful at times. Best gag is when his brother is needling him about synthahol being lovely and awful to drink and PIcard hits back with "Nonsense, I find it deepens one's appreciation for the real thing quite admirably" Also when everyone's off-duty they have these baggy shirts that look like something Van Gogh would wear, and they look comfy as hell.
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Feb 21, 2020 16:05
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Case in point - I've just go to S4E9, where Wesley is late answering a summons, and Picard gives him a great big chewing out in the middle of the bridge just so he can slip in a bit about how Wes got accepted into the Academy. I really like those moments, where Picard is deploying all the formality and hierarchy of Starfleet, but with loads of friendly and jovial subtext. Like in S1 when Geordi is commanding the ship while Riker and Picard are loving about on the planet of automated kill-bot salesmen: quote:"Relinquishing command, Captain." It's just wonderful. He's making a friendly jibe about Geordi splitting up the ship, but also signalling respect and trust in Geordi's performance. DS9 never quite managed to thread that needle with Sisko - he was either being very earnest, or kind of an rear end in a top hat.
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Feb 21, 2020 21:21
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Lester Shy posted:I wish there was a tally of every episode that features a character talking to their mirror universe/holographic/whatever double. Any instance of an actor being shoddily split-screened into a scene with themselves. We all intuitively know it happens a lot, but it really happens a lot once you start noticing it. There's also that episode where Brent Spinner plays three characters alone together on a planet, that was pretty great.
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Feb 23, 2020 16:36
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John Wick of Dogs posted:My favorite bad Geordi episode I've just got to Galaxy's Children, and...yikes. It's got some fun ambitions, but completely misses the mark and lands right on "woman apologises for being creeped out by creepy man"
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Feb 26, 2020 13:54
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I actually like their interaction in the scenes where Brahms realises Geordi is coming on to her and politely shoots him down and tells him she's married (Okay, fending off a man's advances by revealing that your "taken" isn't great, but baby steps). It's frank and fairly honest and exactly how people should talk about their feelings. They could have made a much better episode if Brahms started off knowing about the holo-replica, and was faintly amused by the idea of it. Creating a replica of someone is kinda dodgy, but a holographic sounding board of an expert engineer seems a lot easier to justify, especially in a crisis situation. Then the episode could actually be about their relationship, about the fantasy that Geordi has concocted and how it doesn't match up with reality. Instead Geordi spends the whole episode deceiving and manipulating her, which is creepy and a waste of a good sci-fi premise. It reminds me of the weird hints of a possible love affair between O'Brien and Kira, The episode has a great emotional conflict - Kira is unexpectedly a surrogate mother, O'Brien and Keiko get far too friendly, boundaries are crossed, and relationships get blurred because none of them are prepared for the weird situation they're in. And then the episode ignores that with hints of him wanting to cheat on his wife. The show keeps hinting at way weirder and more interesting conflicts than it actually delivers. I actually really liked The Loss, because of Troi's scene where she's freaked out that without her empath she can't properly recognise people as people and oh god everyone's been replaced by unfeeling meat-robots.
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Feb 26, 2020 23:10
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MikeJF posted:It's entirely possible Temporal Investigations is one of the departments S31 hasn't managed to infiltrate. It strikes me as one of those agencies that'd be sealed up tight and able to stand up to normal command, and whenever anyone suggests using a time machine for some stupid hail mary they're like 'no, gently caress off'. Alternatively TI is where you put the useless-yet-threatening agents. Because the department can't do anything to stop you altering history - by the time they've got to you, history has already been changed and there's nothing they can do it about it. Worse, they won't even be able to figure out how you changed history. Presumably your ship will still have records from the original timeline, but it should be pretty easy to cover your tracks. All TI have is the threats and intimidation.
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Mar 5, 2020 18:33
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Humerus posted:All holodeck episodes in DS9 are great though. In short, the holodeck is a land of contrasts. Our Man Bashir owns both as a holodeck-gone-wrong episode and a transporter-gone-wrong episode, which s come kind of miracle.
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Mar 6, 2020 23:20
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zoux posted:Good Voyager, to me, would look a lot like season one of BSG Talking of "bad captain, great character" Also "bad president, great character" Also "bad colonel, great character" And so on, and so forth.
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Mar 10, 2020 18:39
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There's only one criteria I use for judging intros - do I skip them or watch them in joy? And we can further subdivide this - does this depend on if I'm marathoning the series, or watching weekly. S-Tier - Watch Even When Marathoning Farscape (all of them) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxK8BbpGOAI Battlestar Galactica https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42SSHZkAV3Q The Wire https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcB3yQTvJkk (also its a very intense show, you need a breather) The Expanse - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krqqqgixNq8 A-Tier - Watch on a regular watch, skip on a binge Unbrekable Kimmy Schmidt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIdFa1qLgNQ Daredevil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFYFh8w4758 TNG, DS9 American Horror Story - visually cool, but a bit try-hard https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uszyuXefJyA B-Tier - Skip always dear god Enterprise - song is awful, as discussed up thread Discovery - it tries so very hard, but is so very bland Special Discommendations True Blood - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CV4eGS7H5I - undeniably awesome at first, but starts to grate after a few seasons Westworld - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zc6xBFZbrTc - fantastic music, but it's too self-consciously "prestige TV" for my liking. It's like someone slapping you round the face whilst shouting "do you see the themes?!?"
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Mar 11, 2020 11:34
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Just got to Tapestry, and while Picard and Q bouncing off each other is always fun, the conclusion seems to be that Picard would rather die than become Lt. Barclay. Which seems awfully mean-spirited.
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Mar 14, 2020 12:26
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The Bloop posted:Same I would have liked to see more of an emphasis on how he's a drifter and an idle dreamer, completely lacking in passion. The episode gave equal time to how he's in a tedious, menial job, which is what left a bit of a bad taste.
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Mar 15, 2020 12:04
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Beachcomber posted:A master of anbo-jyutsu. The best part of how dumb anbo-jyutsu is, is when he comments that Riker "never could get over the sightless factor" Like, that's the entire point of the sport! It's like saying how Riker never managed to hold a tennis racket, or never got the hang of hitting a ball without letting go of the bat.
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Mar 24, 2020 23:35
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Pastamania posted:They should of done the
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Mar 31, 2020 14:48
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Chef Boyardeez Nuts posted:lmao some of these DS9 eps are reeeeeal bad. Just worked through a plot where Ezri Dax saves the day via embracing her inner serial killer, racial profiling, and warrantless searches. Best/only good part of that episode is everybody being really surprised at Odo's detailed knowledge about powder burns "I read a lot of 20th century crime novels"
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Apr 9, 2020 18:42
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oh but seriously I posted:I think Quark might have got laid more than any other character in the franchise. What about that freighter captain with the transparent skull? He sounded like quite the lady's man. I've finally got to the TNG episode with the scottish ghost, and Crusher telling Troi all about her sex dreams is a wonderful moment of TMI.
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Apr 10, 2020 14:27
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Pick posted:Wesley snipes!! Role would have been perfect to him - no problems with opening his eyes.
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Apr 13, 2020 21:48
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Roadie posted:This book is great. I highly recommend it for anyone who likes TNG even a little. The low-key horror of that episode is fanastic. "Computer, define the universe" "The universe is a sphere, approximately 12 km across"
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Jun 3, 2020 12:09
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Son of Sam-I-Am posted:The Borg are farming, applying survival pressure so their targets will innovate and develop until they're ripe for harvest. Wasn't this the abandoned ending of Mass Effect?
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Aug 24, 2020 14:31
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Talking of Fathers and Sons, Nog's speech to Sisko about how Rom has shaped his desire to go into Starfleet is absolutely crushing and amazing in equal measure. He's so loving proud of his Dad, but also really ashamed in a way that doesn't subtract from how proud he is. It's great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fuzh6RT0wx8
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Aug 27, 2020 14:59
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Dear god Picard started out looking like it might be alright, but it is rapidly becoming dumber and dumber with every passing episode. I kinda like the idea of a Picard who has become disgusted with Starfleet and is stubbornly dragging it back to the ideals that its supposed to have. But then we have weird poo poo like a super-double-secret Romulan spy openly identifying herself to an enemy, Riker's kid dying because the only cure for his rare disease is loving robot brains. Also the Romulans are refugees living in squalid camps and also running a Borg Reclamation project, and 8 episodes in these plots have yet to intersect. It's also a really tedious mystery, just slowly drip feeding plot, when Star Trek's at its best when it sets up the plot nice and quickly so we can get to people standing around discussing the implications of the plot. It's kind of frustrating, because it has some really great nuggets: - the Irish Romulan adapting to life on earth - great! - Borg slowly reclaiming a sense of identity and culture - great! - dashing Captain going slightly space-crazy because he's been alone for too long - not very star trek, but great! And for a show with upwards of four different kinds of artificial life (synths, borg, holos, fleshy-synths) there's remarkably little discussion of what it means to be artificial. Holos good, synths bad.
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Aug 28, 2020 12:20
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Sodomy Hussein posted:It relies on antiquated notions of how cultures work, that they can be spoiled by interaction or that there is such a thing as a "pure" culture (!!!pull up!!!), when cultures are defined by their interrelationships with other cultures. I can see an argument for the Prime Directive as a way to prevent colonialism. When you have governments of such wildly different power levels (it sounds weird to call em cultures) any interaction is inevitably going to be one-sided. Imagine if the USA decided to open trading relationships with the Sentinelese. It doesn't matter how well-intentioned it might be (it wouldnt be, but lets pretend), the USA would hold absolutely all the cards, they completely set the terms and context for the relationship. They'd end up completely subsumed - not just culturally, but politically and economically. There's also the culture-shock element, but the only time I can think of that backfiring is the one with Worf's brother where they spend an entire episode gaslighting a community and then act surprised when they respond poorly. Whenever starfleet identifies itself openly and talks to people as peers it seems to work out pretty well. Kibayasu posted:Regardless of the rest of it I did like the opening of Discovery where they save the village from dehydration. All that species saw was two figures in robes (Did they show that the species wore the same kind? I forget) walk up to their well, do something, walk away, and then the water returned. In a completely realistic scenario you’d probably go in at night (if night existed on that planet) or whenever those people would not be able to observe so closely but in my head it was “Yeah, okay, that works.” I kind of want an episode where a "primitive" civilisation spots Starfleet meddling in some sort of natural disaster, and instead of worshipping them as gods they're able to deduce the existence of the Prime Directive. Imagine how uplifting it would be, knowing that there was life out there that is filled with enough goodness to help your planet out, but also respects your independence. Imagine how the whole planet could pull together, to better themselves spiritally and technologically, to venture out into the stars so they can one day meet these kind strangers as equals. But that would require optimism.
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Aug 29, 2020 10:20
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Gully Foyle posted:It's hard to think of a worse breech of ethics Guilt tripping a vulnerable ensign into a suicide mission?
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Sep 4, 2020 20:19
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HD DAD posted:I love the stories she’s told about the multiple times she showed up to set drunk/hungover, not knowing her lines, and quickly cramming before the cameras rolled. Sounds like she was playing the wrong Troi.
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Oct 9, 2020 15:48
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Sir Lemming posted:It makes sense in theory but was not done particularly well. Being able to sense people's emotions was something she just did, always, not some extra credit special ability she could pull out when she needed a boost. (But it was usually written as the latter.) It would be really unnerving to suddenly have that ripped away from you. There's makings of something brilliant in that scene where she tries to explain this to Riker, and how from her perspective the entire crew has just been replaced with emotionless meat-puppets. So not only is she disabled, she's disabled in a way that nobody can understand, and is hideously nightmarish from her perspective.
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Oct 11, 2020 08:45
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Eighties ZomCom posted:And they probably don't read anything that isn't Shakespeare or technical manuals because they can't prove how superior they are if all they read are some trashy fantasy novels. Odo reads loads of pulp 20s detective novels. DS9 in generally seems really good at treating the holodeck and the crews weird niche hobbies as actually weird niche hobbies. In TNG it felt like they were a bit too serious about it all. Our Man Bashir is really great at this, but I do kinda wish Bashir pushed back against Garek a little more - when Garek has a go at him for his absurd spy-fantasies that are nothing like real life he just accepts it, even though 5 minutes earlier they got knocked out by a cigar full of sleeping gas - its not even trying to be realistic!
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Oct 14, 2020 11:54
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MikeJF posted:They should've had a second minefield a thousand kilometres away or so that nobody knows about and told it to just drift on over if the first one explodes. The federation? Commiting war crimes with mines? It's more likely that you think!
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Oct 22, 2020 14:57
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John F Bennett posted:Everyone is a programmer on star trek. My personal head-canon is that Starfleet is held together by an extensive black market of people programming and trading replicator recipes. Probably with incredibly long preambles "ohh I learnt this recipe on a trip to an Andorian spice-freighter, it was given to me by a yadda yadda yadda"
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Jun 12, 2021 16:23
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Teenaged-O'Neil in SG1 is hands down the best "teenager plays a fully grown man" i've ever seen, but the TNG one is pretty drat great. Especially how perfectly cracking his voice is.
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Jun 20, 2021 19:52
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I'm 5 episodes into Voyager and uh....is this what it's like for the whole series? It's so loving boring. Caretaker is a pretty decent pilot, Parallax is just a generic "weird space phenomenon". Time and Again continues the trend of all Prime Directive episodes being godawful - the actual moral question of "should we interfere with this planet-ending catastrophe" gets completely skirted, because the crew get sucked in unintentionally, and basically prevent the disaster through dumb luck. Phage has a moderately interesting moral premise - how far would you go to save your race, what awful things would you do - except it only appears in the final 5 minutes. The rest of the episode is tedious fake-science about Neelix's lungs, or tedious fake-science about them tracking down a spaceship. The Cloud is either fake-science or awful Native American mysticism and I gave up halfway through. Eye of the Needle is....almost great. There's a nice sense of frantic hope as the crew try and figure out if they can actually get home. But it's insane to me that they did an episode about people sending a message home and we never see those messages. It seems tailor made for a character heavy plot, but like every other episode we have twice as much faffing around with nonsense as actual plot.
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Jun 21, 2021 10:17
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Brawnfire posted:I'm imagining a bus just full of various incarnations of The Doctor, who all go back in time to that moment in order to pack a bus full and spark a civil rights movement. I have no idea how close that is to what really happens, but lmao One of the doctor's companions, an old white dude, has to sit behind Parks to force this to happen. He starts to object about how horrible that is and how he doesn't want to do it, and gets forcefully told "shut the gently caress up, this isn't about you". It kinda owns. It's also one of the rare times that we see Rosa Parks as someone who was already involved in the civil rights movement and protests, instead of the popular portrayal of her as a Normal Woman who one day decided to Take A Stand. And the time-racist is basically a Proud Boy from the future, so it doesn't really matter that his plan doesn't make a great deal of sense.
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Jun 21, 2021 16:48
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