Star Trek: The Next Threaderation

[El Barto]

That was pretty well done.

[El Barto]

Man, after watching the first few episodes of DS9 it's amazing that it lasted long enough to get as good as it did. The pilot was just awful. Most of the early character exposition was annoyingly heavy-handed. It seemed they were really interested in making O'Brian a central character, well before he had any personality to really focus on. The generic ST plots are woefully ill-suited for the DS9 format. It was certainly better than TNG, but that really just means that it wasn't as awful as it's possible to be.

[King Postwhore]

I feel most TV show look bad early on.  it's rare to hit a home run right away.

[BlobVanDam]

Man, after watching the first few episodes of DS9 it's amazing that it lasted long enough to get as good as it did. The pilot was just awful. Most of the early character exposition was annoyingly heavy-handed. It seemed they were really interested in making O'Brian a central character, well before he had any personality to really focus on. The generic ST plots are woefully ill-suited for the DS9 format. It was certainly better than TNG, but that really just means that it wasn't as awful as it's possible to be.

I thought DS9 was easily the strongest Trek series out of the gate (without much competition), and I thought the first season was fairly good relatively speaking, even if nowhere near as good as it would become in later seasons. TOS had by far the weakest start imo. The first half of season 1 was dreadful, but then it hit its stride and started churning out the better ones.

[The King in Crimson]

The Emissary is my favorite pilot episode of a Star Trek series.

That doesn't really speak to the strength of The Emissary but more to the overall weakness of the pilot episodes. Caretaker is not bad, but it's relatively boring. Farpoint is just... gah. There's some good stuff in that episode, but god is it a pile of cornballs. I never really watched any Enterprise aside from a scattered few episodes so I can't judge that one.

As for the OS, I guess it depends on whether you consider The Cage or Where No Man Has Gone Before. The Cage is passably interesting. It has a neat, though very 1960's sci-fi premise, but that's it. WNMHGB is better, but it doesn't really feel at all like a pilot episode. Still, fairly good overall.

The Emissary does have a few problems with the writing and most of the acting is... awful, but, as a pilot, it set up quite a few plot threads successfully, introduced a rather eclectic (for Star Trek) cast of characters rather well and was a fairly interesting story overall. Not a great episode, but when I rewatch it I usually enjoy it, except part 2 is pretty tedious at points.

I'll give TNG the award for worst first season. There is not a single episode in the first season that I'd call necessary or worthwhile viewing. Maybe "Conspiracy" but that's because it's so batshit crazy and un-Trek-like. The rest? Seeing it once was enough.

TOS had "The Naked Time" which was far more fun than 95% of TNG's first season, so it wins on that only.

[BlobVanDam]

Aside from TOS, every Trek series had a noticeably weaker first 2 seasons, then had a distinct turning point for the start of S3.

TNG was impacted by the writer's strike, and the first two seasons were weak, ending with Trek's only clip show. For S3 they ditched chicken body McCoy clone doctor and got back on track and began to improve.
DS9 S3 started off with introducing the Defiant, the shapeshifters, and finally started to really get into the Dominion arc.
Voyager started S3 by kicking the Kazon's ass off the show for good (and improved even further with S4 when they got 7 of 9).
Enterprise started S3 with new staff, and had the Xindi arc, with their strongest season.

TOS was if anything the opposite, with the first 2 seasons being the strongest, with S3 being regarded as the weakest (although I think it's about as good as S1 overall).

[El Barto]

My biggest issue with Emmissary (aside from the dreadful acting) was that the exposition was so forced. You really don't need to explain Dax right out of the gate. You don't need to establish backstories right out of the gate. That's just corny. Let the characters evolve naturally instead of providing them with soliloquy opportunities to tell you who they are. That's part of the reason I thought Caretaker was so much better as a pilot. It seemed like they were starting with something of a clean slate and the characters got to grow into their roles.

As for TOS, it's not so easy to tell since they were aired way out of order. The first few episodes included WNMHGB, Corbomite Maneuver and Naked Time. A lot of the crap they started the show with was much later in production order. Add to that, since there wasn't really any progression, I don't think any of the seasons are different from each other. I don't get when people say that one season is better than another; they're all the same.

[BlobVanDam]

As for TOS, it's not so easy to tell since they were aired way out of order. The first few episodes included WNMHGB, Corbomite Maneuver and Naked Time. A lot of the crap they started the show with was much later in production order. Add to that, since there wasn't really any progression, I don't think any of the seasons are different from each other. I don't get when people say that one season is better than another; they're all the same.

It definitely didn't have the large changes that some of the other series had in terms of cast, premise, locations etc that made seasons significantly better or worse than others. I find they all go together fairly uniformly. I don't even mind Spock's Brain.
I'd say S2 is probably the most consistent overall, and if I had to rank them, I'd go 2, 1, 3, but there wasn't as much of a divide as the other series had.

[The King in Crimson]

My biggest issue with Emmissary (aside from the dreadful acting) was that the exposition was so forced. You really don't need to explain Dax right out of the gate. You don't need to establish backstories right out of the gate. That's just corny. Let the characters evolve naturally instead of providing them with soliloquy opportunities to tell you who they are. That's part of the reason I thought Caretaker was so much better as a pilot. It seemed like they were starting with something of a clean slate and the characters got to grow into their roles.

I think you should, as that's really the purpose of a pilot; to establish the setting and characters. This is especially important when characters are different species, the viewer should have some idea of what Dax or Odo are. That said, the absolute clunkiest piece of dialogue in Emissary is easily Odo's infodumping about where he was first discovered. It comes completely out of nowhere and it's probably a piece of information that could have been left off for a later episode.

Now whether Emissary did so effectively is another, entirely different debate. I give it props for trying if not succeeding all of the time. TOS really didn't even try. TNG did, but I was largely indifferent to the results and Voyager had a somewhat promising introduction of characters and then promptly dropped most of it.

[hefdaddy42]

Finally, some funny news from my state.

Indian Trail councilman tenders resignation – in Klingon

[FreezingPoint]

"Perhaps today is a good day to resign"

 

[Kotowboy]

Haha.

So glad Nemesis under-performed.

Pat Stewart said that they already had a script ready for the follow up which would unite every living Star Trek character in one film.

Holy Fuck that would have been SHIT.

[El Barto]

A rare agreement between us. It would have been complete and utter shit.

[rumborak]

Star Trek: Where's Waldo

[Kotowboy]

Shit like that is best left to obsessive fangirls on their tumblr.

[BlobVanDam]

Haha.

So glad Nemesis under-performed.

Pat Stewart said that they already had a script ready for the follow up which would unite every living Star Trek character in one film.

Holy Fuck that would have been SHIT.

It sounds like it would have been a desperate last grab anyway, so luckily that didn't go anywhere.
Now we just get that kind of fanwank in fan films instead.

Shit like that is best left to obsessive fangirls on their tumblr.

GIRLS? This is scifi, man!

[Kotowboy]

i meant fan GIRLS as an all-encompassing pejorative term  

[rumborak]

Speaking of fan wank, whatever happened to that Koenig/Russ thing, Renegades? Is it on ice?

[Kotowboy]

AFAIK - it's still going and still looks terrible.

Star Trek Continues looks like the best fan made show out there. Pilgrim Of Eternity was really well made. It just needed a bit better casting.

Obviously Chris Doohan is in it. And Grant Imahara is pretty good as Sulu.

[BlobVanDam]

Renegades is basically done now, and looks slightly better than I expected (although I had less than zero expectations). And wtf is with the Transformers logo thingy they did with that?

i meant fan GIRLS as an all-encompassing pejorative term  

OH NO YOU DIN'T!

[rumborak]

You know, I love First Contact to death, but the idea that some guy living in sheet metal barracks after a nuclear war would put together a warp-capable rocket, is kinda ludicrous.

[BlobVanDam]

And even if it was possible, I don't think it would be the highest priority to them in that state of the world. Relatively slow space exploration technology doesn't seem like something the human race would value in a post apocalyptic kind of world.

I love FC as well, but that seemed a little odd to me too.

[El Barto]

You know, I love First Contact to death, but the idea that some guy living in sheet metal barracks after a nuclear war would put together a warp-capable rocket, is kinda ludicrous.

Moreover that guy? And he said he was in it for the money. Money for what? From who? Like it was lack of money that caused them all to live in a unabomber style shacks in Montana? Entertaining movie, I suppose, but monumentally dumb.

[hefdaddy42]

Definitely the film's shortcoming.

[El Barto]

So I'm watching DS9 again, and it occurs to me that the two best characters (by a huge margin) are both Cardassians. This got me thinking, it seems on all of the franchise's best characters are the ones that they added or developed later, while the characters they start with are normally pretty weak. Worf was just a walking scowl and lousy at his job until Michael Dorn talked them into letting him develop the character more with the whole family honor thing. The best characters on DS9 are Garak, Dukat and later on Weyoun; all added as one-off characters that expanded because they were so good (IIRC, Weyoun actually died in his first appearance, so they made all of the Vorta clones to bring him back). Bashir was actually a pretty interesting and entertaining character, but only after they decided to make him Khan Jr. The only character really interesting on VOY was Seven; a late series addition. I think we can all agree that Shran was the only really good thing about ENT (Vulcan titties aside); same story.

Just my take, obviously, but it seems like the show creators tend to be far less apt to create really strong characters as the show writers and the actors they get to play them.

[King Postwhore]

The best characters live in the gray.  To me, in any TV show that makes them the best character.  Nobody is that good and nobody is that bad and if they are, they are a caricature.

[rumborak]

Yeah, I agree. And I think a lot of Cardassians ended up being great characters because ever since Chain of Command they established that Cardassians are cunning and ruthless, and yet loving and proud at the same time. That just makes them interesting.

[ddtonfire]

The Cardassians have always been my favorite alien race in the ST universe. They look badass and they're more believable than most of the other species.

[Kotowboy]

The very worst Cardassian is Kim Cardassian . 

[El Barto]

The Cardassians have always been my favorite alien race in the ST universe. They look badass and they're more believable than most of the other species.

The funny thing is that I've always hated them as generic bad guys. It's only the ones you actually get to know that make them worthwhile. Almost the exact opposite of the Klingons and the Romulans. I like them both as evil empires, but couldn't name any one in particular that I really liked. Kern was a pretty good Klingon, I suppose. Hell, try naming your favorite Romulan. 

[rumborak]

You know, given the number of episodes the Romulans appeared in, they stayed remarkably one-dimensional. Maybe the problem was that any kind of"normalcy" would have made them Vulcan.

[King Postwhore]

I loved Gowron.  He was so over the top as a character. 

[El Barto]

You know, given the number of episodes the Romulans appeared in, they stayed remarkably one-dimensional. Maybe the problem was that any kind of"normalcy" would have made them Vulcan.

I'm not sure one-dimensional is how I'd describe them. When we got insight they were usually pretty interesting. Troi masquerading as a member of the Tal Shiar and having dinner with the commander, for example. Neat to see the dynamic between the military and the intelligence apparatus. The political aspect that we saw in Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges. Even Spock porking the chick commander in TOS.  I don't think they were ever in danger of becoming too Vulcan. They just never developed any of the individuals enough to provide personal insight.

[jingle.boy]

Favorite Klingon?  General.  Chang.

How can you not love a Klingon quoting Shakespeare while he tee's off on a couple of Federation starships??

Favorite Romulan?  Nero.  Bad ass miner.

[Kotowboy]

Be careful discussing the prequels around here ! Blob will come and fire you out of his Star Trek Canon.