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 Post subject: Live Long and Prosper; the Trek Thread
PostPosted: Wed April 10, 2013 3:43 pm 
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Guys, can we talk Star Trek for a bit?

I grew up on Trek. TNG, DS9, Voyager and Enterprise. I've only watched a handful of TOS, it just doesn't appeal to me. While I'm looking forward to Into Darkness, it is the TV shows that embody what Star Trek is all about.

You could say that these shows are the television equivalent of Pearl Jam for me. TNG would be my 10, DS9 my No Code or Binaural, Enterprise my Riot Act. Voyager.... well...it's got it's moments. Maybe Backspacer. I want to say Creed but I actually like Voyager.

DS9 is my favorite of the group. Once Sisko shaved his head and grew the goatee in Season 3 it was on! It was also one of the first television shows to have story arcs throughout multiple episodes and have an overreaching arc for the series as a whole. It really kept me on edge for the next episode. DS9 gave us Gul Dukat, Odo, the Wormhole, the Gamma Quadrant, the Dominion Wars. It made the Ferengi into a viable race. I love Quark, Rom, Nog and even Brunt of the FCA. Wallace Sean as Grand Nagus Zek!

The show could do everything well. Drama, action, comedy... they mostly pulled it all off. They could do social commentary without being preachy. They'd throw in standalone episodes to help with the pacing and to stretch the creative writing of the team. "The Visitor" is a bona fide tearjerker. "Far Beyond The Stars" took us back to 1940s America, we got to see the entire main cast sans make up as a writing staff for a sci fi magazine. Sisko was now Benny Russel a black writer who was portrayed as a white man in the magazine. An excellent episode that dealt with race and had atmosphere to spare.

I've got all the episodes of all the shows and revisit them often. It's like comfort food, a favorite pillow, a worn pair of jeans that fit just right. It's like Pearl Jam.

I hope this thread goes where no thread has gone before. I'd like to discuss individual episodes in earnest. Let's all go to Quarks or 10 forward and have a few Raktajinos, maybe a bowl of Gagh and let's talk Trek!

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 Post subject: Re: Live Long and Prosper; the Trek Thread
PostPosted: Wed April 10, 2013 3:50 pm 
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I got a nasty case of Trek Overload in the late '90s that I have never really recovered from.


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 Post subject: Re: Live Long and Prosper; the Trek Thread
PostPosted: Wed April 10, 2013 3:56 pm 
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TNG was the only one I faithfully watched.

And, it wins, because it had Mordock, the Benzite frog creature - who bitch-slapped Wesley Crusher by narrowly beating the pissant in the Starfleet Academy's entrance exam.

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 Post subject: Re: Live Long and Prosper; the Trek Thread
PostPosted: Wed April 10, 2013 4:07 pm 
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EJ wrote:
TNG was the only one I faithfully watched.

And, it wins, because it had Mordock, the Benzite frog creature - who bitch-slapped Wesley Crusher by narrowly beating the pissant in the Starfleet Academy's entrance exam.

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Ahhhh Wesley Crusher!


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 Post subject: Re: Live Long and Prosper; the Trek Thread
PostPosted: Wed April 10, 2013 4:48 pm 
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TOS, TNG & DS9 are all amazing. I love them all for different reasons but I have to admit I can't watch TNG anymore. I've watched all those episodes dozens and dozens of times and I'm just burnt out on them. Makes me kinda sad. I watched some Voyager but I never bought into Janeway and the crew was pretty lame. Enterprise was ok but like Janeway, Archer was blah. They aren't in the other threes league. As far as the movies the unofficial trilogy of 2, 3 & 4 are my favorites. Khan is in my top 5 all time for any movie. 6 and First Contact were good too and I enjoyed the reboot. Hope they do a new TV series in the original timeline at some point. Maybe 100 yrs after TNG.


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 Post subject: Re: Live Long and Prosper; the Trek Thread
PostPosted: Wed April 10, 2013 4:53 pm 
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bada wrote:
Hope they do a new TV series in the original timeline at some point. Maybe 100 yrs after TNG.


Man, I am following the rumors with baited breath. Fingers crossed that they do it right.

Also your name just made me think of a particular DS9 season 7 episode with everyones favorite advice giving lounge act Vic Fontaine. :D

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 Post subject: Re: Live Long and Prosper; the Trek Thread
PostPosted: Wed April 10, 2013 7:10 pm 
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The original series has a sort of romance to it...the sense of wonder and exploration. I really like the balance of character in that one. The Next Generation, too, felt really above and beyond other TV shows when it first aired...but it aged incredibly poorly. To some extent, I think they just wrote that universe into too sterile and "advanced" a place, and for them to juxtapose that with silly alien-of-the-week stuff (as they sometimes did) never played out well. That series was at its best when it was a puzzle/mystery piece (preferably with a narrow or internal scope, and not a lot of outside set pieces), and the sad truth is that puzzle/mystery shows don't typically have a lot of replay value.

Honestly, the best thing any of those shows ever did was introduce the Borg. It was the perfect villain for the post-OS universe. In a lot of aspects the whole advanced society/epictech thing had become so lifeless and solutionally adaptable that nothing ever felt like a real threat...not really. With the Borg, they finally found a conceptual enemy that was both genuinely threatening and kind of emotionally upsetting. Then, after...what, like three episodes, or something?...they began pulling even that apart by having individual Borg characters, Borg revolutions, queens, and all sorts of shit. They took the very elements that made that enemy seem like an unstoppable, unrelenting, and insurmountable force, and just wet farted all over it. I honestly think that people at home went "Oh, shit...a mindless force that serves no purpose other than to wipe out the rest of the galaxy, can't be reasoned with, takes your humanity away from you, and has no specialization or fear and therefore no weakness? That's kinda nuts," and Rick whatever his name is only heard "People like dudes in robot suits," so any script with them involved got green lighted.

It got worse when they put TNG in movies, and thoroughly screwed it up. Instead of identifying what made that show popular in its own right, they just gutted everything about it's personality in favor of mindless action scenes, complete personality changes to serve the story, and problems that sounded like they got picked up off the season 3 slush pile or something.

Deep Space had some very cool moments. It really hinted at where Moore was going to take Battlestar, eventually, although it was held back in some of that by the Star Trek brand. I remember an episode where Sisco (sp?) keeps flipping back and forth between being the captain of the station and being a science fiction writer in 1950's America...not only was the way it juxtaposed the Star Trek hippy-dream universe and racist, skeptical America a backdrop for powerful drama, but the ending seemed really ambiguous as to which was his true setting. I thought it was one of the best Star Trek episodes I'd ever seen. The ending of the series was, frankly, terrible.

After DS, I barely watched any. Voyager would have been cool if it had taken the original concept...that whole ongoing decay thing would have served much the same life-giving purpose as the Borg originally did. But without that, what was it really but just more of the same?

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 Post subject: Re: Live Long and Prosper; the Trek Thread
PostPosted: Wed April 10, 2013 8:16 pm 
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The ending of DS9 was very disappointing.


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 Post subject: Re: Live Long and Prosper; the Trek Thread
PostPosted: Wed April 10, 2013 9:49 pm 
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I thought the DS9 ending was probably the best of the TV series. It wrapped up everyones story, and the end shot of Jake looking out at the stars always gets me. The only thing that I didn't I didn't like was I was left wanting to know more. Whats going to happen to these people now?

It wasn't perfect though... I think they could have removed 2 or so filler episodes, like Bada Bing or whatnot and let the ending build a little slower, having more time to put the final pieces in place. I love the show though so I'm not the most rational when it comes to finding faults or admitting them.

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 Post subject: Re: Live Long and Prosper; the Trek Thread
PostPosted: Thu April 11, 2013 2:11 am 
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:facepalm:

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 Post subject: Re: Live Long and Prosper; the Trek Thread
PostPosted: Thu April 11, 2013 3:20 am 
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I was waiting for that one verb.

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 Post subject: Re: Live Long and Prosper; the Trek Thread
PostPosted: Fri April 12, 2013 10:03 pm 
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My dad had surgery on his thumb for osteoarthritis yesterday. They had to cut a ligament from his forearm and sew it into his thumb to stop the bone on bone contact. His hands have been nearly useless the past 2 years.

Needless to say he has a lot of downtime and is already bored out of his mind. I suggested he give DS9 a try. I ripped him a copy of the series and he loves it. I'll go over and watch it with him so I'm really diggin it to. Nothing like a little father and son time.

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 Post subject: Re: Live Long and Prosper; the Trek Thread
PostPosted: Sat April 13, 2013 1:19 am 
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I always wondered what Worf would do to Deanna Troi in the sack.


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 Post subject: Re: Live Long and Prosper; the Trek Thread
PostPosted: Sat April 13, 2013 10:35 am 
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Just got done watching the 2009 Star Trek by JJ Abrams. I thought it was fantastic and a great reboot of the franchise.

Never watched much of the TV shows, used to watch The Next Generation every now and then because Patrick Stewart rocks :)


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 Post subject: Re: Live Long and Prosper; the Trek Thread
PostPosted: Sat April 13, 2013 2:51 pm 
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BootsToAsses wrote:
Just got done watching the 2009 Star Trek by JJ Abrams. I thought it was fantastic and a great reboot of the franchise.

Never watched much of the TV shows, used to watch The Next Generation every now and then because Patrick Stewart rocks :)


Patrick Stewart does indeed rock. I enjoyed the reboot too but I thought it was a little long on action and a little short on character drama, which is the difference between the tv shows and the movies. Also the lens flare. My eyes!

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 Post subject: Re: Live Long and Prosper; the Trek Thread
PostPosted: Sat April 13, 2013 3:39 pm 
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TheDapperGent wrote:
BootsToAsses wrote:
Just got done watching the 2009 Star Trek by JJ Abrams. I thought it was fantastic and a great reboot of the franchise.

Never watched much of the TV shows, used to watch The Next Generation every now and then because Patrick Stewart rocks :)


Patrick Stewart does indeed rock. I enjoyed the reboot too but I thought it was a little long on action and a little short on character drama, which is the difference between the tv shows and the movies. Also the lens flare. My eyes!


Ha yeah, lens flare was a bit much at times but for the most part I enjoyed the way Abrams chose to shoot the movie.

I think there's a lot to try and fit in when dealing with an origin story and for the most part it got the job done. Plus, there's always time in the sequel for more character development.


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 Post subject: Re: Live Long and Prosper; the Trek Thread
PostPosted: Sat April 13, 2013 3:43 pm 
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Yeah your right, it is a lot to fit into a 2 hour movie. The origin story was really well done, without a doubt my favorite part of the reboot. The trek movies have a history of leaving out what made the shows so special (to me). I'm pumped for Into Darkness though, it looks like it's gonna be a good one. :thumbsup:

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 Post subject: Re: Live Long and Prosper; the Trek Thread
PostPosted: Sat April 13, 2013 4:09 pm 
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TheDapperGent wrote:
Yeah your right, it is a lot to fit into a 2 hour movie. The origin story was really well done, without a doubt my favorite part of the reboot. The trek movies have a history of leaving out what made the shows so special (to me). I'm pumped for Into Darkness though, it looks like it's gonna be a good one. :thumbsup:


Which reminds me, I haven't checked out the trailer yet :shock:


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 Post subject: Re: Live Long and Prosper; the Trek Thread
PostPosted: Sat April 13, 2013 7:25 pm 
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I watched TNG pretty regularly Back In The Day, but I don't think I've ever sat through an entire episode of the original series. As my goal in life is (basically) to be a scholar of American culture, do you guys think it's worth it to watch TOS from the beginning?

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 Post subject: Re: Live Long and Prosper; the Trek Thread
PostPosted: Sat April 13, 2013 7:36 pm 
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Simple Torture wrote:
I watched TNG pretty regularly Back In The Day, but I don't think I've ever sat through an entire episode of the original series. As my goal in life is (basically) to be a scholar of American culture, do you guys think it's worth it to watch TOS from the beginning?


It's one of the cornerstones of sci fi but it can be hard to watch. The sets aren't anything close to convincing and the acting sucks. Deforest Kelley is good though. Some of the stories are interesting and I think that is the one saving grace of the show. It's a product of its times.

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