Star Trek: The Next Threaderation

[Progmetty]

Finally on a steady routine of an episode or two a day, working through Barto's list and Blob's additions to it, but when I don't have my iPad or laptop handy to know which episode to go to next I just watch the next one down the list on Netflix, I think Netflix has them in the same order they are on the DVD's.
The episodes I'm watching are the remastered ones, they look great but I don't like the total replacement of space scenes and most landscape scenes on planets, they even replace scenes on monitors that shows the outside of the Enterprise, I saw some comparison scenes between the old and remastered footage; the remasters do look great as I said but then knowing they're newly created takes something away from the experience, especially with the contrast with the scenes they could replace, such as internal of the ship. I just wanted to note that but I'm not getting held up on it or letting it get in the way of me enjoying the episodes.
One last thing about the remastered episodes is that the HD makes the men's make up on this show painfully visible and ALL men on this show had make up on..
I think the reason I was put off for a while was how much I disliked the last episode I saw last year, Space Seed, we've talked about this here and I might revisit it sometimes since it's seemingly a universally acclaimed one.
Episodes I've seen over the last few days working down the list:
Errand of Mercy: Excellent episode, got my appetite for the show up again, discussed my thoughts about it a bit here.
The City on the Edge of Forever: Another great one, I'm a time travel fan and I enjoyed how they conducted that here.
Amok Time: Great Spock Episode, no remarks except I'm starting to find a trend in Dr. McCoy telling Captain Kirk that there's something suspicious he thinks Kirk needs to look into and Kirk dismissing it or taking it lightly only to find out McCoy was right.
The Enemy Within: A very fun episode, I liked it a lot, a good reminder of how difficult it was to show one actor playing two identical characters in the same scene back then, evil Kirk is horny..
Charlie X: An episode I watched when I didn't have the list handy, the kid is an awful actor and this is one of the episodes that bother me with how easily avoidable the predicament was.
The Man Trap: Another episode that wasn't on the list, this one was decent though, I thought.
Mudd's Women: Just finished that now, decent episode, I think the guy playing Mudd is the first good actor to guest star in this show as far as I've seen.
I'll try to post about the episodes as I watch them so that the remarks are still fresh in my mind.
I still find it funny whenever they are scenes around the hallways on the Enterprise and there seem to be A WHOLE LOT OF PEOPLE that we don't know just living there and hanging out like it's a college campus
Quick question: Do you guys think it's okay to view the recent Star Trek trilogy or it would it spoil some stuff?

[BlobVanDam]

Trilogy? Are you counting the upcoming movie?

First movie should be ok, I'd hold off on the second movie until you've seen The Wrath of Khan, or even better just hold off permanently.

[Progmetty]

Yeah including the upcoming movie, I'm hoping by the time it comes out I'd be completely through with all TOS and the six old movies, which I'm very much looking forward to btw.

[BlobVanDam]

Figured you must have been referring to the new movies, but 2/3/4 of the original movies are also considered somewhat of a loose trilogy in how they connect, so I was just making sure.

Into Darkness borrows a lot from The Wrath of Khan including lifting entire scenes, and I'd imagine that it falls even flatter if you aren't familiar with The Wrath of Khan first. Without having actually seen the upcoming movie, I expect that will be fine to watch even if you haven't finished the old stuff yet.

[Kotowboy]

Plus watching The Wrath Of Khan is pretty much mandatory.

It's a great film in its own right. Not just the best Star Trek film.

There is one scene from The Wrath of Khan in Into Darkness - but with a twist. Apart from that it's *very* subtle nods.

[El Barto]

Finally on a steady routine of an episode or two a day, working through Barto's list and Blob's additions to it, but when I don't have my iPad or laptop handy to know which episode to go to next I just watch the next one down the list on Netflix, I think Netflix has them in the same order they are on the DVD's.
The episodes I'm watching are the remastered ones, they look great but I don't like the total replacement of space scenes and most landscape scenes on planets, they even replace scenes on monitors that shows the outside of the Enterprise, I saw some comparison scenes between the old and remastered footage; the remasters do look great as I said but then knowing they're newly created takes something away from the experience, especially with the contrast with the scenes they could replace, such as internal of the ship. I just wanted to note that but I'm not getting held up on it or letting it get in the way of me enjoying the episodes.
One last thing about the remastered episodes is that the HD makes the men's make up on this show painfully visible and ALL men on this show had make up on..
I think the reason I was put off for a while was how much I disliked the last episode I saw last year, Space Seed, we've talked about this here and I might revisit it sometimes since it's seemingly a universally acclaimed one.

The replaced footage of the remastering is usually pretty tastefully done. I can only think of one time when it screwed things up. Just as difficult as showing two actors at the same time is showing multiple ships at the same time. In The Ultimate Computer, which I'm sure is on the list I provided, there's a battle sequence with 5 constitution class ships. In the original it was pretty poorly done, with the 4, then 3, then 2 ships locked real close together. In the new one they're all flying about independently. However, along with the music the original provides a great deal of tension. The other ships are constantly bearing down on the Enterprise. There's a sense of sheer determination that's lost. I can see why they redid that footage, but it really took away something from the original.

That said, they restored all of the footage including the syndication cuts. Some of those cuts were far more egregious than redoing the exterior shots.

Amok Time: Great Spock Episode, no remarks except I'm starting to find a trend in Dr. McCoy telling Captain Kirk that there's something suspicious he thinks Kirk needs to look into and Kirk dismissing it or taking it lightly only to find out McCoy was right.

Spock inviting McCoy down to Vulcan as one of his closest friends was important to the series, I think. Much like Bart and Lisa in the early days of The Simpsons, they spent most of their time bickering but underneath still had a good deal of regard for each other.

Charlie X: An episode I watched when I didn't have the list handy, the kid is an awful actor and this is one of the episodes that bother me with how easily avoidable the predicament was.
The Man Trap: Another episode that wasn't on the list, this one was decent though, I thought.

Don't care for either of them. They were the first and second episdoes aired, I believe.

Mudd's Women: Just finished that now, decent episode, I think the guy playing Mudd is the first good actor to guest star in this show as far as I've seen.

Didn't care for the episode, but Harvey Mudd is great. He'll be back.

The City on the Edge of Forever: Another great one, I'm a time travel fan and I enjoyed how they conducted that here.

Generally considered TOS's finest hour. I thought it was overrated at first, but honestly it probably is their best work.

I still find it funny whenever they are scenes around the hallways on the Enterprise and there seem to be A WHOLE LOT OF PEOPLE that we don't know just living there and hanging out like it's a college campus

Once you get to TNG, it's a giant cruise ship. Families walking around in swimwear and stuff.

Quick question: Do you guys think it's okay to view the recent Star Trek trilogy or it would it spoil some stuff?

I'd wait until you watch the entire rest of the franchise. Chronological order is working well enough for you now.

[Kotowboy]

I laugh when I see shots like this. It's so obvious that they've all got a mark so everyone can be seen.

I've even seen cast members stand in front of an extra - who then awkwardly do a side step into frame

Or when the camera pans across the bridge in a tense scene and two bridge officers are in the same line of sight or whatever - the one behind takes a step to their left into frame

whilst looking concerned. usually Troi

So funny.


It's like posing for a family photo.

[El Barto]

All the more so when you consider how little there actually is of the bridge that's actually built. You've got just what can be seen from two specific angles and the rest opens up into a big soundstage.

[Kotowboy]

Which Star Trek vessel would you most like to live on ?

I think Enterprise D  would be the most comfortable.

We didn't get to see a whole lot of E - but it didn't look as bright and comfy as the Enterprise D.

D looked luxurious ( A cruise liner in space - El Barto ).. And being the 24th century - the interior lighting is probably daylight simulating vitamin D emitting

so you would not get claustrophobic and depressed.

[Progmetty]

A triple non-list viewing due to lack of access to list at the time:
What Are Little Girls Made Of? God damn that android Andrea is smoking hot, easily the hottest woman I've seen so far on this show. Decent plot, the red shirts are so useless and so often old and out of shape , I like that Kirk gets upset when they get killed but very briefly and by the end of the episode he's perfectly fine heh, I also like that Kirk's message to alert Spock of his situation included calling him a half-breed and that Spock complained about it at the end of the episode, not cool Captain.. not cool.
Did I say God damn? Cause.. God damn!.
Miri If I had to make a top 3 episodes of what I've seen so far; this would be one of them, really tight, kept my close attention from beginning to end, excellent plot and execution, all the children were great, just imagine this show done with modern day time camera movements and cinematography, very creepy and insane, doesn't waste time or drag at all. Hard to believe you guys didn't include it on your lists of recommendation, I recommend you revisit it.

[El Barto]

Andrea is always mentioned as the top of the list. There are plenty of smoking hot girls in TOS, but she's kind of the benchmark. She's certainly my pick.

As for the episodes, hated them both. Two of my least favorites, in fact. WaLGMo is probably in the bottom 3, in fact, alongside Spock's Brain and Requiem for Methuselah. Rather than revisitng my list, perhaps you might be better served to watch all the episodes that didn't make my list. 

[Progmetty]

Haha I like to listen to fans so I'll keep revisiting the list but we certainly appreciate as many different things about the show as we dislike.
I can understand your view on WaLGMo and I wouldn't rewatch it but I didn't hate it. I can't imagine how you hate Miri though.. 300 years ago a civilization attempted to make immortality possible but they ended up with a virus that kills all adults and drastically slows down the aging of children, so we're left with the children aging a month every 100 years and a planet where they've been it's sole inhabitant all that time even though they remain mentally children, that's gold man.

[El Barto]

Well, if they hadn't inexplicably made it another Earth it would have been slightly better. Add to that, the kids were just creepy as fuck. And not in a cool, Children of the Corn sort of way. They were just weird to look at. As I recall, a lot of the actors were older than the kids they were supposed to be playing, and there's a point where that becomes quite unsettling.

[Orbert]

What Are Little Girls Made Of? God damn that android Andrea is smoking hot, easily the hottest woman I've seen so far on this show. Decent plot, the red shirts are so useless and so often old and out of shape , I like that Kirk gets upset when they get killed but very briefly and by the end of the episode he's perfectly fine heh, I also like that Kirk's message to alert Spock of his situation included calling him a half-breed and that Spock complained about it at the end of the episode, not cool Captain.. not cool.

Kirk specifically focused on that thought so that the mind-copying machine would pick it up, giving Spock a clue that something was up with the android Kirk.  Spock knew that Kirk would never say that, so the way android Kirk tossed it out there was a red flag.  Not cool, but intentionally so.  I thought it was funny the way Spock called him on it at the end, and Kirk was like "Hey, I had three seconds to think of something, and it worked, right?"

And yeah, Sherry Jackson (Andrea) was a total babe.  If you search the Internet, there are pictures where you can see... more of her.

[BlobVanDam]

Agreed on the robot chick being one of, if not the hottest girl in TOS. Iconic outfit to show her off too. I actually thought the episode itself was ok. Definitely not one of my least favourites, nor top of any list either.

Miri though? Awful and creepy in more ways than one. I'm with Barto 100% on that one.

[Progmetty]

Well, if they hadn't inexplicably made it another Earth it would have been slightly better.

I agree, but it didn't prove to any significance to the rest of the story, so it's stupid but nothing was built on it. I think they should have left that detail out, maybe they thought to say that to justify why the inhabitants of the planet look human.

Add to that, the kids were just creepy as fuck. And not in a cool, Children of the Corn sort of way. They were just weird to look at. As I recall, a lot of the actors were older than the kids they were supposed to be playing, and there's a point where that becomes quite unsettling.

The oldest looking one was their leader and he couldn't be more than 18 years old either, it made sense in the plot since Miri and that guy were about to get the disease because they were just passing their adolescence. But they were creepy indeed and I kinda got a kick out of that, especially when they ganged up on Kirk and kicked his ass so hard I haven't seen that much bleeding on his face after any other fight he had on the show
Fun bit of trivia; the little girl Kirk carries out of the class room is Shatner's own daughter, I started listening to an interesting podcast called Mission Log: A Roddenberry Star Trek Podcast in bed before I nod off -taking a break from Dragnet heh- and they just talk about every episode in TOS in details, review and trivia.

What Are Little Girls Made Of? God damn that android Andrea is smoking hot, easily the hottest woman I've seen so far on this show. Decent plot, the red shirts are so useless and so often old and out of shape , I like that Kirk gets upset when they get killed but very briefly and by the end of the episode he's perfectly fine heh, I also like that Kirk's message to alert Spock of his situation included calling him a half-breed and that Spock complained about it at the end of the episode, not cool Captain.. not cool.

Kirk specifically focused on that thought so that the mind-copying machine would pick it up, giving Spock a clue that something was up with the android Kirk.  Spock knew that Kirk would never say that, so the way android Kirk tossed it out there was a red flag.  Not cool, but intentionally so.  I thought it was funny the way Spock called him on it at the end, and Kirk was like "Hey, I had three seconds to think of something, and it worked, right?"

Oh I thought it was funny too, I should have put a laughing emoticon at the end of that heh

And yeah, Sherry Jackson (Andrea) was a total babe.  If you search the Internet, there are pictures where you can see... more of her.

My good sir, I did that during watching the episode

btw I met a Trekkie today at the playground -I have babies..- and we spoke a bit, he kept driving the point home that the real fun won't being until I get to The Next Generation and frankly I'm not super excited about that, I know it's the Patrick Stewart show and that should be good enough but I'm not very keen on T.V from the early nineties.. I still intend on watching it but I'm just not super hot for it even though it seems to me now that most of Star Trek fandom is oriented around that show.

[BlobVanDam]

If/when you do get to TNG, the first two seasons are easily the weakest, so keep that in mind. I think DS9 is the better series though, and is probably more highly regarded amongst the diehard Trekkies.

[El Barto]

What Are Little Girls Made Of? God damn that android Andrea is smoking hot, easily the hottest woman I've seen so far on this show. Decent plot, the red shirts are so useless and so often old and out of shape , I like that Kirk gets upset when they get killed but very briefly and by the end of the episode he's perfectly fine heh, I also like that Kirk's message to alert Spock of his situation included calling him a half-breed and that Spock complained about it at the end of the episode, not cool Captain.. not cool.

Kirk specifically focused on that thought so that the mind-copying machine would pick it up, giving Spock a clue that something was up with the android Kirk.  Spock knew that Kirk would never say that, so the way android Kirk tossed it out there was a red flag.  Not cool, but intentionally so.  I thought it was funny the way Spock called him on it at the end, and Kirk was like "Hey, I had three seconds to think of something, and it worked, right?"

I don't remember anything even remotely that intelligent about that episode. I guess I'll have to go back and [shudders] rewatch it.

Of the TOS ladies, I think I'd have to rank them Sherry Jackson, then Barbara Bouchet (Kelinda, By Any Other Name), with a 4-way tie for third (a bunch of really hot yeomen). If they'd tried, Joan Collins might well have topped the list.

btw I met a Trekkie today at the playground -I have babies..- and we spoke a bit, he kept driving the point home that the real fun won't being until I get to The Next Generation and frankly I'm not super excited about that, I know it's the Patrick Stewart show and that should be good enough but I'm not very keen on T.V from the early nineties.. I still intend on watching it but I'm just not super hot for it even though it seems to me now that most of Star Trek fandom is oriented around that show.

While I hate the characters, if you take the top 50 or 60 episodes they're all good-excellent. Moreover, it sets up all the other series.

[Kotowboy]

If/when you do get to TNG, the first two seasons are easily the weakest, so keep that in mind. I think DS9 is the better series though, and is probably more highly regarded amongst the diehard Trekkies.

First  two seasons and then 7 as well.

Season 5 is the best I think.

[BlobVanDam]

I don't recall having any issue with S7, although its been 7 years since I've seen it now.

[Kotowboy]

O RLY ?

I seem to remember you or El Barto always saying how bad it is and they'd basically run out of ideas by then.

[BlobVanDam]

That sounds like much more of an El Barto opinion.

It was only S1&2 that I considered outright bad. Actually, the first two seasons of every Star Trek series from TNG onwards had a distinctly worse first two seasons.

[El Barto]

When you have to resort to episodes about Geordi's mom, you've officially exhausted all of your ideas. Add in Data dreaming that the ship is a train, the ship's computer becoming alive, Data's mom, Crusher and dahm candle, and Lwaxana, Alexander and Wesley episodes and you've got a pretty awful season.

In fairness, Gambit, Lower Decks and Parallels were all very good episodes.

[El Barto]

Rewatched WaLGMo. The thing with Ruk, a planet of androids and The Old Ones is actually a very good story. The problem is Andrea. Her love story makes no sense and ruins the whole thing overall. Maybe if they'd been able to develop it better it'd have helped, but I'm not sure. I gather it was the hackneyed trope of Kirk making the android fall in love with him and freak the fuck out, but it just didn't work. As bad an episode as it was, Requiem for Methuselah actually pulled that bit off. In WaLGMo the Andrea part was a mess.

Also, after they spend minutes talking up how Roger Corby is one of the intellectual giants of the entire federation, he asks Christine "where are you" when she's talking to him on the same line as Kirk. Kirk also uses Andrea a human shield. At the end of the episode, Kirk says that Christine has decided to stay on board the Enterprise. As opposed to what? Living on a frozen planet after the entire robot population of 4 has been killed? According to Memory Alpha the episode went way over schedule, mostly because they were having to do rewrites the whole time they were shooting because the script was so bad. I'd say that 8 days wasn't long enough.

[Orbert]

I agree that the final product was a bit of a mess, but as with most sci-fi, it's the original concept that counts.  For me, I guess.  The idea that The Old Ones had all this knowledge, and Ruk was an android who'd been around so long that he'd actually forgotten some things ("Yes!  That was the equation!")  Plus he was just so damned cool-looking.  Corby was a putz, and I thought the Andrea story was a bit silly, but hey it was the 60's and even concepts like this were still really new.  Can/will androids become so advanced that they have emotions?  If so, are they just "programmed" emotions, nothing more than responses to various stimuli, or isn't that just what human emotions are anyway?  And she was cute, so that made it much more tolerable.

[Kotowboy]

HOLY CRAP

NICK MEYER JOINS STAR TREK 2017 WRITING STAFF

https://www.startrek.com/article/nicholas-meyer-joins-new-star-trek-series

 

THAT IS GREAT NEWS. FUCK THE NEW MOVIE

[Kotowboy]

* waits for Blob & El Barto to only find the down sides to this story *

[Adami]

The reason this is bad is news is.....


...okay it's good news. I still won't be excited about the show until I see either a very promising trailer or a very good first episode. Before that, and knowing just how much the studio doesn't understand Star Trek, no amount of good news will lead me to believe that the studio won't mess it up anyway.

[BlobVanDam]

It's not what I'd call bad news, as I love the particular movies he worked on.
However, the movies and the series are different animals altogether, so I still consider him a wildcard as far as TV is concerned, and outside of Trek, he hasn't done anything at all I've heard of since in the past 25 years. I hope this choice wasn't just to try and ease people's minds more than actually what serves the show. I'd be more excited if he was working on the new movie.

[Nefarius]

It's been a year...

[BlobVanDam]

Don't remind me. Dammit.


New Star Trek fan film for anyone who's into that kind of thing, Star Trek: Horizon. Being a fan film, the acting isn't all top notch, and the CG is overdone, but for a fan film that was primarily made by one guy, it's very impressive, and very watchable. Much better than Renegades.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l94v4YOqxOc

[hefdaddy42]

It's not what I'd call bad news, as I love the particular movies he worked on.
However, the movies and the series are different animals altogether, so I still consider him a wildcard as far as TV is concerned, and outside of Trek, he hasn't done anything at all I've heard of since in the past 25 years. I hope this choice wasn't just to try and ease people's minds more than actually what serves the show. I'd be more excited if he was working on the new movie.

This is pretty much the way I looked at it, as well.

[King Postwhore]

But he still hasn't worked in movies for 25 years as well!

[Kotowboy]

But he wrote the best three Star Trek movies.

[Progmetty]

Interesting discussion on  What Are Little Girls Made Of from the Star Trek podcast that I listen to, they get into the nature of android cloning and whether it's still really you, as in transfer of conscience or just a machine with your background.
I need to post more often if I wanna share my thoughts cause I tend to forget but I rarely have enough time on my computer, anyway here's a couple of things I wanted to share:
- I forgot to ask this when I first watched Mudd's Women; in the elevator Mudd recognizes Spock as a half-Vulcan, yet it seems to me Spock looks exactly like all the Vulcans he meets in Amok Time, am I missing something?
- William Shatner's acting has significantly improved from Season 1 to Season 2.
- William Windom was pretty great in Doomsday Machine, it took me a few minutes before I recognized him from The Twilight Zone, really good actor and solid character.
On to the episodes, back on Barto's list:
The Doomsday Machine: Solid episode, enjoyed it through out and loved the Moby Dick vibe for Matt Decker, I'm looking to see if youtube has the original footage for the planet eater scenes, curious to see what 1960's technology had there. This episode could have been a movie easily, one thing I love about most of the Star Trek episodes I've seen so far is that they don't drag at all, like most TV shows these days do, on the contrary; it actually very often seems like they could have expanded on a bunch of things in the plot but didn't/couldn't because of time restraints or some other reason.
The scene where Decker takes over the Enterprise was a reminder for me that most -if not all- of these characters are military officers, I dunno why I thought they were a scientific team from a futuristic NASA-like organization.
It was interesting to see Captain Kirk getting down and dirty with some machine fixing on the Constellation, I believe this is the first time I've seen him do anything other than ask a lot of questions and give orders based on the answers he gets from his crew, feels like his only talent has been decision making so far.
Curious to see if there are more of the planet eater out there to show up in later episodes or shows.
Funny bit: As soon as Kirk asked Scotty to beam back and leave him to detonate the Constellation; Scotty is like "okay bye" hehe, didn't try to show any solidarity or sympathy to Kirk who could have easily died in this stunt, I'm thinking they couldn't waste time on more dialogue there.
The Changeling: Great episode, I enjoy episodes that take place entirely on the Enterprise, throughout the episode I wondered why Kirk couldn't just order the Nomad to self destruct as soon as it proved deadly, he eventually did that in some way but after what I thought was unnecessary mind gaming with the thing. Shatner gave his relatively best bit of acting on the series when he thought Scotty was killed.
Funny bit: I like that Uhura's memory has been wiped clean yet it would only take a week to re-educate her on everything she need to do her job again, kinda means that she's very easily replaceable
The fact that they're all military officers explains to me how McCoy is always around even for matters that doesn't require a medical opinion, like they're get together in the conference room to discuss some danger or plan and he'd be there which used to seem odd to me.