All Things Star Trek — Page 38

Much of post-Kes Voyager and the pilot and 3rd season of Enterprise were very watchable.

The JJ films are just as good/bad as the TNG films.

Bingowings said:

Much of post-Kes Voyager and the pilot and 3rd season of Enterprise were very watchable.

The JJ films are just as good/bad as the TNG films.

 No one has ever "ruined" Star Trek, because it's always been so hit and miss.

There were plenty of stinkers in TOS. 

TNG's first season is almost unwatchable.

Insurrection was so dull, I own it, just read the back of the DVD box, and can't remember what it's about.

"Into Darkness" was lousy, but no worse that Insurrection or ST5. 

DuracellEnergizer said:Perhaps I'm using too much hyperbole yet again. From what I've read about the man, though, he seems to share the same conceited opinion of himself and his influence upon Star Trek that Lucas has in regards to Star Wars.

well, Roddenbery did create the thing.

And how he tried to remove references to TOS in TNG reeks of Lucas-style "original vision" BS.

I had not heard of this.   What references did he try to remove?

Frankly, I think that if Roddenberry have lived to see the SE, he probably would have tried to follow Lucas' example and re-edit TOS into meshing with TNG.

proof?

DrCrowTStarwars said:

Picard and Riker fought all the timeand those briefing room scenes in every episode would show the crew arguing over what the right thing to do was before Picard put his foot down and made his choice,you know just like Kirk use to do with Spock and McCoy. How many knock down drag out fights and personal problems were there between the crew members on TOS again? Because I don't remember any unless you count Spock getting infected with the spores or Pon Far and that is an outside influence and not an internal conflict. You are cheery picking your examples to make TNG look bad and TOS look good.

Well, it has been over a year since I watched TNG, and large amount of episodes were just forgettable, so I can't be blamed for not remembering every single little detail.

Still, outside of that one episode where Troi lost her empathic abilities and the TNG movies, I can't remember a single instance of any major disagreement/argument between any of the crew members.

DrCrowTStarwars said:

For example you are acting like TOS always used aliens that looked like the rock creature for Devil in the Dark when a more typical example of what aliens looked like on the show would be The Apple. While you don't give TNG credit for aliens like the Crystalline Entity or the Sheliak.

I'm well aware that TOS used a lot of human aliens. My point, though, is that this can be excused because of budgetary/technological limitations of the time; I see no similar reasons for why most of the aliens on TNG looked the way they did.

And yes, I know a few exotic creatures like the Crystalline Entity and the Sheliak showed up in TNG. But they are the rare exceptions, and considering how long TNG ran, it's pathetic that significantly more alien aliens never showed up.

DrCrowTStarwars said:

This seems very personal for you and you seem to be going out of your way to make unfair personal attacks against the show and the people who worked on it. My guess is that you are one of those stuck in the mud old school TOS fans who sent Patrick Steward death threats for his crime of daring to try and replace Shatner.

Actually, before last Spring, I hadn't seen a single episode of TOS or TNG since I was in Grade 1 all the way back in the early '90s, so I'm far from and "old school TOS fan". And I like Picard, for the most part.

DrCrowTStarwars said:

You need to take a step back and take off the rose tinted glasses and see that TOS was not perfect and TNG did not have an unlimited budget.

No, TOS was not perfect -- far from it. The show was hindered by a lack of character development, character arcs, story arcs, and technical limitations, all of which are unfortunate results of the time the show was made in. Has TOS been made a couple of decades later, it probably wouldn't have suffered from these defects.

And no, TNG didn't have an unlimited budget. Still, would it have cost that much more to invest in more alien-looking facial prosthetics, a bit of body paint, and maybe some coloured contact lenses?

I don't believe anyone working on TNg was lazy,lazy people don't work 18 hour days and don't completely rewrite scripts that have been sent to them at the last minute because the story isn't working.

I'm not calling the writers lazy (well, they were when it came to the technobabble). I'm calling the people who were behind the design of most of the aliens lazy.

Of course, as I said, they might not be lazy, just lacking in vision.

I will admit in the third season when Roddenberry stopped controlling the day to day TNG showed a massive improvement in the story and character department,but you seem to be grasping at any reason to hate this show as if it hurt somehow or you think the people behind it are guilty of some kind of crime and should be in jail or death row.

I don't hate TNG -- I like a fair number of characters and episodes. However, that doesn't mean I don't think the show had far too many flaws and a rather large negative impact on the ST Universe.

They just need to erase the abrams movies from canon. We don't need four versions of STII anyways. 

4 versions of STII?  I know of STII, Star Trek Nemesis, and Star Trek Into Darkness. What is the 4th version?   

Space Seed/Balance of Terror

What proof do you have that making aliens that didn't look at all human was a choice for TNG. They had to use the makeup people they had and they didn't have an unlimited budget as you admit.  Oh and at the time it aired TOS was one of the most expensive shows on Tv,so how come they get a pass?  They shouldn't,and you keep insisting that TNG was the only show that ever had aliens that looked human,it was not.

Also how did the show that got the best ratings of any Star Trek series and became just as much a part of the pop culture as Star Trek damage Star Trek?

Oh and again go rewatch the episodes you will find tons of debate between the character but in the end Picard was the captain so the crew did what he said because that is how the military or any job with a chain of command works.  it seems to me your problem is with the fact that the crew didn't commit mutiny every single week. That may seem dramatic but it's not realistic and it would have gotten old after a while.  TNG and TOS were set up to explore SCi-Fi ideas and a lot of that technobabble you complain about has a basis in real science and that was the point of the show a lot of weeks.  They would take something that was a theory at the time and expand upon it. If that isn't your cup of tea then that is fine but to call anyone involved lazy or say they were damaging the franchise doesn't make sense to me. If anything those types of stories are harder to write then a bog standard action adventure story. i know because I have tried and you have to do a ton of research and come up with a way to explain it to the average viewer and given the rating TNG got and the fact that it is fondly remembered by so many people I would say everyone involved did their jobs.  Oh and I always thought the aliens looked really good,it's only after CGI came around(Something that didn't get into full swing until after the series ended)that I heard anyone complain.

You say TOS should be judged against other shows of it's time well then the same holds true of TNG.  The other Sci-Fi shows from the 80s don't hold a candle to it and it had a level of personal conflict that went well beyond what had been present on TOS. Even if it didn't just having people fighting doesn't make a story well written. You seem to think that if you put two characters into a room and they don't instantly pull out knives and try to kill each other then the story is badly written. I don't know what to tell you other then that is not how humans in general and military personal act in real life. Also there are other things you can do with those character and there is nothing wrong with having them debate what the right and wrong thing to do is. Conflict for the sake of conflict is not good writing it is just forced.

All I can say if if the charge is that the characters on TNG were friends and were not plotting each other's deaths at the drop of a hat and they resolved conflicts like adults with words then guilty as charged. I don't think Star trek is the franchise for you. I think maybe you should give the Sci-Fi version of BSG a try,it seems a lot closer to the type of show you would enjoy.

Warbler said:

4 versions of STII?  I know of STII, Star Trek Nemesis, and Star Trek Into Darkness. What is the 4th version?   

 Most people I know count First Contact as a remake of St2 even though it's plot is different. The basic theme of Picard wanting revenge is there(Even though they dealt with that on the series so it should not have been a problem at that point)and they quote from Moby Dick. That is close enough for a lot of people to see it as a repeat.

Also i should point out that TNG stopped mentioning TOS all the time in season 3,again the first season Rodenberry didn't have direct control over. If anything it was the new producers not Rodenberry that wanted TOS to be ignored so their work could stand on it's own. They only brought TOS back into the picture when Paramount wanted an episode to tie in with the release of Star Trek 6.

which episode was that?

The only Star Trek 6 related episodes I can think of were Yesterday's Enterprise. and the Voyager episode Flashback which was five years later.

Tobar said:

DuracellEnergizer said:

I'm well aware that TOS used a lot of human aliens. My point, though, is that this can be excused because of budgetary/technological limitations of the time; I see no similar reasons for why most of the aliens on TNG looked the way they did.

...

TNG had the same budgetary and technological restrictions that TOS faced. TNG had a bigger budget but it was by no means unlimited. Creating complicated non-humanoid aliens for one-off episodes weekly was and is highly impractical. CGI was still in its infancy at the time so there was no out there either.

And this is leaving out the almost impossible deadlines they faced for every episode. You can cheat sets quickly but creature effects are something else entirely.

 Yes exactly. Tng had limits on it's budget and for the most part wasn't able to use CGI.  I would like to see anyone who complains about TNG being lazy produce completely non human looking aliens every week,without CG and without blowing a budget or production time line.

As for the Star Trek 6 episode of TNG that was Unification,it aired a few months before the movie came out and mentioned events from the movie in order to promote it. The whole idea of having Spock on TNG as a tie in came from Paramount not the writers or producers of TNG.

Warbler said:

4 versions of STII?  I know of STII, Star Trek Nemesis, and Star Trek Into Darkness. What is the 4th version?   

 Star Trek 09

Star Trek Inserrection?  how is that a remake of Star Trek II?

They even had the kobayashi maru test in that film.

ok, maybe sorta. 

And it borrowed from Nemesis as well, with Nero wanting revenge for his destroyed planet (not to mention both villains were Romulans).

The whole franchise is dead, and has been for 20 years (15 if you like DS9). No power on earth can make ST good ever again. JJ blew it up permanently. Does anyone honestly think Chris Pine will be as iconic as Willaim Shatner? STID was so horrendous it nullified any goodwill the previous film may have had. These new films represent everything wrong with our corporation-centric, one percenter, money is speech culture. Like I said, they should wipe these films out of existence; they deserve to be forgotten. Star Trek used to mean something to us. Now it's just some soulless product to make some rich Viacom CEO even richer.

generalfrevious said:

The whole franchise is dead, and has been for 20 years (15 if you like DS9). No power on earth can make ST good ever again. JJ blew it up permanently. Does anyone honestly think Chris Pine will be as iconic as Willaim Shatner? STID was so horrendous it nullified any goodwill the previous film may have had. These new films represent everything wrong with our corporation-centric, one percenter, money is speech culture. Like I said, they should wipe these films out of existence; they deserve to be forgotten. Star Trek used to mean something to us. Now it's just some soulless product to make some rich Viacom CEO even richer.

 while I didn't think Star Trek Into Darkness was all that great, I think you exaggerate just a bit.