The Official Star Trek Thread

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

B or low B+ as its own thing. I might revise it downwards once I see more of the previous Star Trek shows whose legacies it apparently did controversial things with.

To say V'ger ever had a legacy worth worrying about is silly.

In that case, I know a number of silly Star Trek fans.

V'ger in my opinion wasn't just bad SF, it was bad Star Trek. Not that every episode was bad, but the ones involving changing the time stream were especially bad, worse than Season 3 of TOS or Season 2 of TNG, and at least those both had external factors that contributed to their crappitude.

[Tender Branson]

LOL:

[brucejoel99]

LOL:

2020: Queen Elizabeth II

2364: Admiral Elizabeth II

[Mr. Morden]

Since I guess we're posting TNG memes now, you guys should check out my new favorite Youtube channel, "Ryan's Edits".  Some hilarious (short) TNG videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgPy2kU9nEk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7oWXooPT80
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csbSoyzOjm0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HqSH2HYA8g

[Tender Branson]

Production won't start for at least until the fall for Season 2 because of the virus, but there are 4 actors that are currently rumoured to return in the next season:

* Whoopi Goldberg (Guinan)
* LeVar Burton (Geordi)
* Michael Dorn (Worf)
* Rosario Dawson (wants to play "Q")

Dawson is also Cory Booker's girlfriend.

[Tender Branson]

Important:

Jonathan Frakes Reveals If Data And Borg Queen Had Sex In "Star Trek: First Contact"

IGN recently hosted a watchalong party of Star Trek: First Contact, with actor/director Jonathan Frakes on hand to answer fans’ questions for the duration of the movie by way of a live Q&A. One of the most interesting revelations to come from the chat was Frakes’ clarification of a long-held fan debate: did Data and the Borg Queen do it?

In the movie, Data is kidnapped by the Borg Queen who attempts to win him over to her side. She reactivates his emotional chip and grafts human skin onto his face, with the aim to make him feel a range of emotions – from pain to pleasure. At one point, she seduces him, with the android explaining that he’s “fully-functional” and “programmed with multiple techniques.” The last we see of them they’re locked in a passionate embrace. But did things go further?

According to Frakes, you bet they did. When asked if it would be safe to assume the pair had sex off-screen, the filmmaker said “I would,” before asserting in clear terms that “yes,” they did the deed. So, there you have it, 24 years later we’ve finally got this question answered.

https://wegotthiscovered.com/movies/jonathan-frakes-confirms-data-borg-queen-sex-star-trek-contact

[Deep Dixieland Senator, Muad'dib (OSR MSR)]

Red Letter Media are the best reviewers on youtube.

[Tender Branson]

California will allow film production again this week, so production for Season 2 will start soon and filming in the fall (according to Jeri Ryan).

[Tender Branson]

Wesline Crusher, Jamie T. Kirk, Jeanne-Lucile Picard & Co:

[John Dule]

You need to stop posting this stuff.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Tender swap?

[Tender Branson]

Tender swap?

[T'Chenka]

No babe threads Wesline and Jamie T are drop dead.

You need to stop posting this stuff.

Megathread compromise so Dule doesn't get triggered?

[Tender Branson]

Just watched episode 1 and it’s:

The worst Star Trek I have ever seen.

Discovery is an abomination and not worthy of the genre. Some scenes were good and the beautiful scenery of Iceland was making up for the crappy action scenes, but other than that it was a failure.

[Middle-aged Europe]

I'll probably never become much of a fan of this show. It's not that bad of a series, but also not a particularly good one. Kind of... average.

Season 2 was for the most part an improvement over Season 1. The new season seems to be largely ripping off Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda plot-wise, although it will probably turn out to be a tad better than its spiritual precursor (not that this is a particularly high bar, consdidering what a trainwreck "Sorbo Trek" had been.)

This Season 3 premiere had two particularly cheesy, cringe-worthy segments: Burnham being drugged and the overly pathos-laden Federation flag-raising scene at the end. The introduction of the new character (and obvious Burnham love interest) Book was an interesting subversion of long-standing tropes though. In the beginning he seemed like a kind of Han Solo, a smuggler and thief without any moral code or compass. Turns out he's sort of an 32nd century environmentalist who's acting rough because he's operating in a rough world (I guess that accounts as an application of the "Good All Along" trope: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GoodAllAlong).

The worst Star Trek I have ever seen.

The season premiere was hardly worse than And the Children Shall Lead, Shades of Gray, The Muse, or Threshold.

[Mr. Morden]

Definitely not the worst I've seen, but yeah, pretty blah.  Not really notable enough to spend much time talking about.  Star Trek in general hasn't been very good since the 20th century, IMHO.  I'm just marking time until December, when we get the season premiere of Season 5 of The Expanse.

[RI]

Star Trek in general hasn't been very good since the 20th century, IMHO.

Enterprise was pretty solid, IMO.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Star Trek in general hasn't been very good since the 20th century, IMHO.

Enterprise was pretty solid, IMO.

It's last two seasons anyway... but by then most viewers had already turned off.

[dead0man]

when do you guys think was "peak" Star Trek.  Mid to late Next Generation is my favorite, but I haven't seen much DS9 or Voyager.


I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but me and the wife are slowly watching our way through everything Star Trek, starting from the beginning.  We've got a dozen or so episodes left of the original series and it's real hard to watch.  I respect the fact that they were first (or at least early) and didn't have much of a budget, but sheesh.  Spock/Nimoy is the only thing good about it....sometimes the writing isn't bad.  Oh, and the outfits the alien ladies often wear are nice...but Kirk/Shatner is hot garbage.  Most of the writing is sh**t, but it pairs well with the sh**t acting.  Don't get me started on the stage make up they all wear (we were like 8 episodes when I noticed everyone had on heavy eye shadow, like they were prostitutes in the 80s and now we can't not see it.  It's hard to take someone serious when they're wearing purple eye make up.).

[Middle-aged Europe]

when do you guys think was "peak" Star Trek.  Mid to late Next Generation is my favorite, but I haven't seen much DS9 or Voyager.

Seasons 3 and 4 of TNG was Star Trek's overall high point IMO. 5 and 6 were also relatively strong, but by the 7th fatigue had set in.

Depending on who you ask, DS9 was also pretty strong, but very different in style, tone and structure from the shows that came before and immediately after. That's why I wrote "depending on who ask", because that show also managed to divide traditional fans of the franchise: Darker, less utopian, more conflicts (both among the crew and between the powers of the galaxy), increasingly serialized structure, mostly space station-based rather than on a starship, topics and issues that so far hadn't really been touched by the franchise like religious faith or large-scale warfare. Seasons 1 and 2 of DS9 were still pretty bland and sometimes outright boring. So, it's a bit hard to get through them, but by the 3rd season the show managed to find its footing, with the introduction of a new enemy and a new starship.

Voyager is overall weaker than any of its precursors. Most of the time it tried to emulate TNG, but with more action-driven plots and somewhat weaker scripts. For a long time, I just regarded it as a dumbed down version of The Next Generation, although considering what the franchise has put out in most recent years it's now more in the middle of the franchise quality-wise rather than at the bottom. Seasons 4 and 5 - and maybe 6 - were probably Voyager's high point. Voyager's specialty were the two-parters, of which it did a total of twelve during it's seven-year run. These two-part epsiodes usually told grander, more epic stories and used the show's more action-driven formula to the fullest extent. Commonly held opinion is that the best of these were Scorpion (probably THE best Voyager episodes as well as two of the best episodes in the overall franchise), Year of Hell, and Dark Frontier.

Much of what I just wrote about Voyager also applies to Enterprise, at least in its first two seasons and maybe in a somewhat blander fashion. With declining ratings, it took a hard turn in its second half though. Season 3 somewhat resembles DS9 by introducing a new, dangerous enemy and suddenly switching to a military conflict-driven serialized structure out of the blue. For most part, the quality of the show noticeably improved during that year. Season 4 is then a bit of an oddball. For the most part, it's essentially a 20-episode long hommage to TOS, picking up plot points from the earliest show in the franchise, building and expanding on them and giving a more modern look and feel than TOS had. Season 4 also had the most unusual structure of any season of Trek, since it almost exlusively consists of two-parters and three-parters. Like in Voyager's case that gives the episodes a much more epic feel.

The most recents incarnations of the franchise, Discovery, Picard, and Lower Decks were overall probably weaker than all the shows outlined above, but I'm gonna refrain from doing a lengthy review of them right now.

[Citizen (The) Doctor]

Mid-late TNG and everything past season 2 of DS9 are probably Star Trek at its peak. I'd even wager that if S3-7 of DS9 were released today (minus the fluff on things like Ira Steven Behr's obsession with the 50s), it'd be popular on a near GoT scale (okay maybe that's a bit hyperbolic, but it would be a damn good show).

[Middle-aged Europe]

After having seen 10 of the 13 episodes now I gotta say that the third season of Star Trek: Discovery is not only this series' worst season so far, but probably one of the weakest in the entire franchise's history, right up with the first seasons of TNG or DS9.

During its second season, I had the impression that Discovery managed to work out some of the kinks and started to improve itself. The first couple of episodes of the current Season 3 also continued to show some promise. But it peaked with and then suddenly fell apart after the fifth episode ("Die Trying"). Everything that came after that point - episodes 6 through 10 - has been just atrocious.

One of the main issues with the season's plotting is obviously that they solved the initial mystery of "what's left of the Federation and where are they hiding?" way too quickly, because that one was quickly checked off with the aforementioned episode "Die Trying". And then everything went downhill.

They are now somehow looking for the "cause of the Burn", an apocalyptic event in the Federation's history that led to an almost complete collapse of Starfleet. Seemingly sounds interesting at first glance, but sometimes they're getting totally distracted from that supposedly significant issue with inane and pointless subplots. But even when they manage to stay on course with the main arc for a week or so I often wonder why I should care about finding the "cause of the Burn". The way it was presented so far, it just didn't catch my interest. Characterisations also seem all over the place, with most characters having become incoherent cardboards chewing out cheesy and clichè-ridden lines of dialogue.

Kill that show already, put it out of its misery. Unfortunately, it has already been renewed for a fourth season. So, this leaves me with the choice of hoping that it manages to pull itself together again somehow or just stop watching it. There's also the new Captain Pike spin-off Strange New Worlds incoming. I hope that one won't turn out to be a similar trainwreck. At least Anson Mount with his "easygoing yet competent" portrayal of Pike had charisma and screen presence.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Episode 11. The "cause of the Burn" is finally revealed and it turns out as lame and illogical as the preceding search for it.

There's a planet which - for some reason - consists entirely of Dilithium. And on this planet there's also for some reason a malfunctioning Holodeck entraping you in gothic horror/haunted house-like scenarios. And in this malfunctioning holodeck lived an orphaned child who for some reason mutated due to the extensive Dilithium "radiation" around him, giving him the ability to make all the Dilithium in the galaxy simultanously explode in sort of a temper tantrum. Which led to the apocalyptic collapse of almost the entire Federation more than 100 years ago. On top of that, all of this was presented and told in a very tedious and boring story.

The child is now an adult, but obviously not quite right in his mind given where and how it grew up. But, attention is quickly shifted to other things then, namely that the crew of Discovery now needs to fight the thugs of the Andorian-Orion organized crime syndicate which for some reason had been the entity filling the power vaccum following the collapse of the Federation.

Somehow I had the feeling that I was watching an episode of the cheesy and ludicrous Space: 1999 from the mid-70s. If I'm not too busy maybe I'm gonna watch Season 3's final two episodes too and then I'll probably gonna quit on Discovery.

[Tender Branson]

After this disappointment, we can only hope that Picard Season 2 will be as good as the 1st.

[Mr. Morden]

After this disappointment, we can only hope that Picard Season 2 will be as good as the 1st.

I was reasonably engaged for much of Picard Season 1's duration, but the last couple of episodes were dreadful, IMHO.  I think the season finale was such a dumb way to resolve that plot line that I lost brain cells watching it.  I'll give that show at least one more season, but I'll probably stop watching Discovery after this season unless the final episodes really wow me.

The Expanse is just so much better than any of 21st century Trek IMHO.  No need for me to spend that much more time on new Trek just because it's part of the same franchise that gave us TNG and DS9, which I loved.