All Star Trek Discussion Thread ("Into Darkness" trailer released)

[Super Dude]

Zinda, his face black, his eyes red.

[AndyDT]

______, when the walls fell.

[Super Dude]

______, when the walls fell.

Ahhh, Shaka, when the walls fell.  The river Temarc in winter.

[chknptpie]

I love that episode! hahaha

[Orbert]

I love when the alien captain is arguing with his crew about which scenario he and Picard should play out, and at some point he yells "IN WINTER!" and they all snap to attention.  I guess the idea of "CHILL!" is pretty universal.

[Vivace]

Even the subplot with Dumar was horrendous. Again I point to Confused Matthew's review on Star Trek DS9 for Season 7. He nailed everything that was wrong with that season. Everything. Dumar and Dukat were my all time favorite characters on the show and I almost imploded from sheer rage when I saw what they did to these characters in Season 7.

However I do disagree a bit with CMs take on Vic. I did enjoy Vic. I thought he had an interesting premise however I do agree that replace Quark's with Vic's was a bad move.

Dumar was great. Dukat just led him there, while his own devil thing wasn't great. But at least it gave Lois Fletcher something to do other than being a cunt to Kira.

Oops I'm sorry. I did not mean Dumar. I meant the role Lois Fletcher played. Dumar took up the slack for season 7 and I will always love his character for that very reason.

[MetalJunkie]

FINALLY a Star Trek thread.  I'm divided pretty evenly between the two camps, but I think I'm more familiar with Star Wars than Star Trek.  TOS is the best them.

I... I think I love you.

[Vivace]

There definitely should be a more concentrated love with the TOS series. The characters are hands down the most interesting out of any of the other series.

[El Barto]

It occurs to me that one thing TOS has that none of the others did was a central character triumvirate.   While TOS did have Scottie, Checkov, Sulu, Uhura, etc., the key to the show was the perfect balance of McCoy/Kirk/Spock.  The three of them combined to make a fantastic nucleus.  Each with starkly different mindsets that were always checking each other.  Excellent.  All of the other shows tried to work in 8 different characters, which made them each less interesting, IMO.  The crews just seemed to be a big, happy family lovefest, with all of them getting along great with each other, but never really forming any particular bonds. So one week Data and Riker disagree about something.  Who cares?  I can't really think of any key relationships like that in the other shows, nor was there ever any real, ongoing tension between any of them.  Would any of them have really given a shit if Riker or Geordi had left?  I doubt it.

[Super Dude]

It occurs to me that one thing TOS has that none of the others did was a central character triumvirate.   While TOS did have Scottie, Checkov, Sulu, Uhura, etc., the key to the show was the perfect balance of McCoy/Kirk/Spock.  The three of them combined to make a fantastic nucleus.  Each with starkly different mindsets that were always checking each other.  Excellent.  All of the other shows tried to work in 8 different characters, which made them each less interesting, IMO.  The crews just seemed to be a big, happy family lovefest, with all of them getting along great with each other, but never really forming any particular bonds. So one week Data and Riker disagree about something.  Who cares?  I can't really think of any key relationships like that in the other shows, nor was there ever any real, ongoing tension between any of them.  Would any of them have really given a shit if Riker or Geordi had left?  I doubt it.

This, but I think I enjoy TOS more in terms of the cultural-historical context.  I mean look at it: a time in human history in which all cultures on Earth had finally made peace with one another?  A world (or galaxy, I suppose) without poverty, hunger, or disease?  Right at home among the utopian ideologies springing up in the late 60s.

[Orbert]

That's an excellent point.  Kirk, McCoy, and Spock argued all the time; Kirk teased McCoy and Spock sometimes, but McCoy and Spock gave each other shit and really meant it.  There were disagreements about policy and course of action, but in the end, they (usually) came to an agreement and a plan that worked.

With TNG and the others, everything was so civil and polite and politically correct that it got downright boring sometimes.  And yeah, too many main cast members, all fighting for screen time.  With Voyager, the crew was actually composed of members of warring factions forced to work together, and after half a season, there wasn't even any mention of it, let alone any conflicts within the crew.  Blah.

Conflict creates drama, and drama is more interesting than everything shiny and happy all the time.

[Cool Chris]

Good points about Kirk/Spock/McCoy. Harve Bennett talks about that being one of his favorite things about the original series when he was brought on to do Wrath of Khan, and an element he tried to include in the films he worked on. Spock = Logic; McCoy = Passion, emotion; Kirk =  Having to reconcile those two sides of human nature to do what was best for the ship.

Of course, for TOS, the focus on those three was in large part do to the limitations of filming they had at the time. I think Roddenberry would have preferred to include the core 7 more (8 if you include Yeoman Rand) for a more balanced cast, but there just wasn't time in the shooting budget to work in so many people.

[El Barto]

The three of them made for a damned dynamic relationship.  Despite all the animosity, McCoy and Spock were still very tight.  Kirk was usually the one to bring balance to the two of them, but then McCoy would absolutely rip Kirk a new one on a fairly regular basis.  This was something that was sorely lacking in the later series.  Try to imagine one of Pickard's minions laying into him the way McCoy would.  

Of course, for TOS, the focus on those three was in large part do to the limitations of filming they had at the time. I think Roddenberry would have preferred to include the core 7 more (8 if you include Yeoman Rand) for a more balanced cast, but there just wasn't time in the shooting budget to work in so many people.

I dunno.  The other guys all got plenty of time in the episodes they were a part of, it's just that the main three were always the focus.  There weren't many episodes that featured all of them, but there were plenty that featured one or two of them as integral characters.  But even in an episode that features, lets say Checkov, prominently, it's still about K/S/M. 

[Adami]

Enterprise tried to bring back that kind of relationship with Archer, Tapal and Trip a bit. And I think it worked quite well.

But of course no one cares, but Enterprise had a boring season or 2, which no other show had.

[AndyDT]

It occurs to me that one thing TOS has that none of the others did was a central character triumvirate.   While TOS did have Scottie, Checkov, Sulu, Uhura, etc., the key to the show was the perfect balance of McCoy/Kirk/Spock.  The three of them combined to make a fantastic nucleus.  Each with starkly different mindsets that were always checking each other.  Excellent.  All of the other shows tried to work in 8 different characters, which made them each less interesting, IMO.  The crews just seemed to be a big, happy family lovefest, with all of them getting along great with each other, but never really forming any particular bonds. So one week Data and Riker disagree about something.  Who cares?  I can't really think of any key relationships like that in the other shows, nor was there ever any real, ongoing tension between any of them.  Would any of them have really given a shit if Riker or Geordi had left?  I doubt it.

I thought Picard and Data formed a great dynamic. Riker and Worf were quite good as well although less rarely together. I agree McCoy was tremendous, forcing Kirk and Spock into sanity and humanity respectively on occasion.

Also, appreciating how TNG was not tied to a long-winded story arc now.

[Vivace]

There were many times when Kirk got pissed off at Spock as well and also times when McCoy chewed out Kirk. 100% agree, the tension between these characters was perfect. They each had character traits that were realistic and showing and none of them were afraid to express these emotions. It's unfortunate that the rest of the crew was left to the background. I would have loved to see the real-life tension of Shatner and Takai expressed on the big screen between Sulu and Kirk perhaps in a way where Kirk had prejudices and Sulu did not. However, in TOS these tensions seemed real because not only did the characters themselves have chemistry but the actors as well. In TNG you seem to see the actors having great chemistry but not the characters. Arguments between Picard and Riker were there but robotic. At the end of the day, all was well and everyone was friendly again. Even when Worf was getting out of line at times that tension never really went anywhere. The episode "Encounter at Farpoint" was a good episode but it really does frustrate you. Just when you think there is going to some character development with a bit of tension between two characters, its dissolved. The only tension that remained was between Picard and Q. Out of all the character development that happened on TNG I say, the development between Picard and Q was hands down the best of the whole series. Q to me was a little like Bones but way more juvenile in the beginning. I'm actually rather glad Q was largely ignored in Deep Space Nine. I believe he was in one episode in an attempt to get him and Sisko to have the same relationship as Picard did. Thank God they ditched it.

Another thing I liked about TOS was the characters ability to say what was on their mind. The lines for the TOS series and movies were far far more "normal" than the TNG series was. The story-telling in TNG was vastly superior, but the characters were a bit too robotic as if the lines were more important than the emotions behind them. Eventually this changed as the series went on, but the characters never developed past a certain line and we never really got too deep into any character to know what traits one has which another completely disagrees with. For example in Encounter at Farpoint, it was depicted early on that Riker does not like Androids. Excellent! We have at least one character with which we can have potential development. But nope. This line was delivered and then forgotten almost immediately afterwards. The tension between Picard and Wesley was excellent for a while, but it never really did make it as far as it could have gone and the episode where Wesley must save Picard's life could have been a heck of a lot more powerful if they took the extra step.

Another thing worth noting. If any character development was done in TNG, it was done with a secondary character, that is a character largely specific to an episode and not specific to the series like the crew. For example we see Worf in a relationship with a another half-blood Klingon and we see excellent character development here, but it's just for this episode alone. If she was a member of the crew, wow! That would have changed the dynamics completely.

[Dream Team]

Good points about Kirk/Spock/McCoy. Harve Bennett talks about that being one of his favorite things about the original series when he was brought on to do Wrath of Khan, and an element he tried to include in the films he worked on. Spock = Logic; McCoy = Passion, emotion; Kirk =  Having to reconcile those two sides of human nature to do what was best for the ship.

Of course, for TOS, the focus on those three was in large part do to the limitations of filming they had at the time. I think Roddenberry would have preferred to include the core 7 more (8 if you include Yeoman Rand) for a more balanced cast, but there just wasn't time in the shooting budget to work in so many people.

This type of triumvirate is present in lots of classics, see for example Jules Vernes' Journey to the Center of the Earth. In his mind it would be: Spock - Mind, Kirk - Body, McCoy - Soul. TOS made it work extraordinarily well.

[Super Dude]

Many great works of the last century share that triumvirate: Star Wars (Luke, Leia, and Han), The Matrix (Neo, Trinity, and Morpheus), Harry Potter (Harry, Ron, and Hermione)...even LotR has Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli, and in most cases they all correspond to that same mind, body, and soul thing.

[El Barto]

I thought Picard and Data formed a great dynamic. Riker and Worf were quite good as well although less rarely together. I agree McCoy was tremendous, forcing Kirk and Spock into sanity and humanity respectively on occasion.

Data seemed to be the only character that had any special bond with Pickard, but that wasn't really enough.  It was really more of just a closeness than anything else.  And sense he was emotionless, he didn't add much.  There needed to be a foil for Data/Pickard.  From that point, I guess Riker was what blew it for me. 

As much as I was glad to see Tasha Yar get killed stupidly, she was the one that could have brought some tension into the crew dynamic.  Of course there was obviously the Data thing, but she was generally impulsive and single-minded.  But even when she was around they never really explored that very much.  Worf was the one that should have brought some real emotion into the fold, but he was really just a wuss for most of TNG.  Any time he demonstrated some Klingon balls during the series, it always felt scripted and contrived.  "Now, let's have a scene where Worf kills somebody with a bat'leth. Yeah, that'll be neat!"

Notice how much more interesting Worf was when he got to DS9 and didn't fit in with anybody?  He hated the Ferengi.  Didn't think Odo was worth a shit.  Didn't care much for the rest of them and only stuck around because he was going to be dealing with the Klingons.  His development from that point was great. 

[Orbert]

They tried to give Worf some development on TNG with all the Klingon culture, visits to the Klingon homeworld, the deal with his father and brother and shame and honor and all that, and some of it was kinda cool.  But it also felt like they were doing it because in TOS they got into the Vulcan stuff with Spock, so on TNG they had Worf and thus should similarly dig into the Klingon stuff.

[El Barto]

They tried to give Worf some development on TNG with all the Klingon culture, visits to the Klingon homeworld, the deal with his father and brother and shame and honor and all that, and some of it was kinda cool.  But it also felt like they were doing it because in TOS they got into the Vulcan stuff with Spock, so on TNG they had Worf and thus should similarly dig into the Klingon stuff.

Yeah, some of it was pretty interesting, but honestly it was interesting because he was such a pussy as far as real Klingons went.  It was his human side that made him an interesting character, but that weakened the crew dynamic.  What the show needed was for him to be a full-blown Klingon lunatic.  I think he eventually got halfway to that point, but not in TNG.

Imagine if Worf had been that Klingon madman.  A crewman that nobody thought should be in Starfleet, except Pickard who understood the usefulness of having such a guy around, and managed to keep him checked unless that volatility was required.  Howabout Kern as head of security. That would have made for some good times.

[Adami]

They tried to give Worf some development on TNG with all the Klingon culture, visits to the Klingon homeworld, the deal with his father and brother and shame and honor and all that, and some of it was kinda cool.  But it also felt like they were doing it because in TOS they got into the Vulcan stuff with Spock, so on TNG they had Worf and thus should similarly dig into the Klingon stuff.

Yeah, some of it was pretty interesting, but honestly it was interesting because he was such a pussy as far as real Klingons went.  It was his human side that made him an interesting character, but that weakened the crew dynamic.  What the show needed was for him to be a full-blown Klingon lunatic.  I think he eventually got halfway to that point, but not in TNG.

Imagine if Worf had been that Klingon madman.  A crewman that nobody thought should be in Starfleet, except Pickard who understood the usefulness of having such a guy around, and managed to keep him checked unless that volatility was required.  Howabout Kern as head of security. That would have made for some good times.

It would have been boring after an episode and cliche. Sorry.

[Super Dude]

Whenever I think of Picard and Worf, this immediately comes to mind:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61AAwNDwU4U

[Adami]

I don't understand the mindset of finding whatever the dynamic was for TOS and saying the other shows are worse for having a different dynamic. Seems random. If you like one more, fine, but to say the other shows should have had identical dynamics is just odd.

[Orbert]

I don't think anyone's saying the dynamics should be identical, but there does seem to be a lot of support for the idea that TOS had conflict among the main cast (mostly the Big Three) and conflict can lead to more interesting viewing.  Everything after that was really antiseptic and boring compared to TOS.  In that one regard anyway.

[El Barto]

Whenever I think of Picard and Worf, this immediately comes to mind:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61AAwNDwU4U

"No sir I have not had a chance to meet all the crew members since I have been back."  

I don't understand the mindset of finding whatever the dynamic was for TOS and saying the other shows are worse for having a different dynamic. Seems random. If you like one more, fine, but to say the other shows should have had identical dynamics is just odd.

I'm merely pointing out that I personally didn't find much of the character development in the other series to be worth a damn.  In an earlier thread, I tried to come up with my favorite and least favorite TNG characters, and decided that I liked Pickard and Data, and really didn't care one way or another about any of the rest of them.  And I didn't really find Pickard to be particularly interesting; just likable.  Not a very promising impression of a show.  

If any member of the TNG crew died, or retired, or whatever, including Pickard, the show would have gone on and people really wouldn't have cared too much.  Maybe two of them.  You can't say that about K/S/M.  

[Adami]

I guess you just don't like Star Trek much outside of a few things, fair enough.


By the way, are you puposefully mispelled picards name as a joke or do you not know that it's Picard and not Pickard?

[mizzl]

Katherine Janeway FTW

[El Barto]

I guess you just don't like Star Trek much outside of a few things, fair enough.


By the way, are you puposefully mispelled picards name as a joke or do you not know that it's Picard and not Pickard?

John Luke Pick'erd, FTW!

Unintentional.  Just didn't bother to spellcheck.

And I actually enjoy watching all of the various incarnations.  There are great episodes in every season of every series.  It's just that the bad ones tend to be much worse when you don't give a shit about any of the characters.  If they blew ever crew-member of Voyager out of an airlock, save the Dr., Tuvok (maybe) and 7/9, it probably would have been a better series.  For every Year of Hell that you lost, you would be spared 3 Tuvix's. 

[Mr. Beale]

There no doubt that the big three of TOS had great onscreen chemistry and is what makes the show work. I'm pretty sure I've read that the TNG crew were purposely written to not have significant character flaws or have interpersonal conflicts as part of Roddenberry's utopian vision (which obviously is pretty stupid, not to mention is pretty far removed from the original series).

I do think that sells some the others shows short though. DS9 weilds a large cast well because of paired relationships (Sisco-Kira, Sisco-Dax, Quark-Odo, Bashir-O'Brian, Bashir-Garak, etc.) The crew did tend to evolve toward liking everyone, but had things like Miles who couldn't stand Julian for most of the first two seasons. Not to mention regular character outside the crew who could stir stuff up. Though it's true you never saw characters who genuinely not like each other such as Worf and Quark interact much. Voyager did drop the ball in that regard but it dropped the ball on a lot of things.

[AndyDT]

Good Riker episodes:

The Pegasus
The Outcast

[ddtonfire]

Best Riker episode:

Frame of Mind

[Vivace]

I don't think anyone here is saying TNG was bad because it had bad characterization, I think the overall judgment of TNG is one of the greatest sci-fi shows to be on television but having a few flaws like poor characterization. TNG has one of the highest rewatchability ratios of any television show out there and for good reason. It's just an excellent fun time overall. Sure there were stinker episodes but they were rare in the series itself. A complaint I hear a lot are basically the way the characters interact with each other and when you compare to Deep Space Nine, TNG does fall flat on that regard. But TNG is far more rewatchable than DS9 is, however again, that doesn't mean DS9 is bad. I rather enjoyed DS9 myself but it flowed more like Babylon 5 or BSG did. It's an intense show with little levity.

[AndyDT]

Best Riker episode:

Frame of Mind

Watched that a lot. One I haven't seen more than once is the DS9 with Thomas Riker (his reappearance in other words). I watched it when it came on and thought it was excellent. There was some talk he could be a recurring character. I think they may have used him as inspiration for ST:Insurrection (the film).

Troi episodes? ISTR there were some good ones. Wasn't a big fan of Lwaxana although there was a great episode where she was the sub-plot and it contrasted well to the more serious main story.

[5]

Best Riker episode:

Frame of Mind

Watched that a lot. One I haven't seen more than once is the DS9 with Thomas Riker (his reappearance in other words). I watched it when it came on and thought it was excellent. There was some talk he could be a recurring character. I think they may have used him as inspiration for ST:Insurrection (the film).

Troi episodes? ISTR there were some good ones. Wasn't a big fan of Lwaxana although there was a great episode where she was the sub-plot and it contrasted well to the more serious main story.

There was one awesome awesome episode with Lwaxana in which there was also eleven-year-old Kirsten Dunst. Dark Page was the name I think.