Black, white, Klingon, or even female - Star Trek

[on:]

Episode 745 coming soon!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZeDzvgFOTA&feature=youtu.be

[Reply #1 on:]

I've seen 'The Cage', every Kirk era episode and all of 'The Next Generation', Deep Space Nine', 'Voyager' and 'Enterprise'... not sure how many that adds up to. Not seen the new one though.

[Reply #2 on:]

According to Memory Alpha there are 744 episodes so far (but they include the 13 movies)

Perhaps that why there are no new ideas in TV sci fi anymore :P

To help with the maths that includes:

TOS: 80 Episodes
TAS: 22 Episodes
TNG: 176 Episodes
DS9: 173 Episodes
VOY: 168 Episodes
ENT: 97 Episodes 
DIS: 15 Episodes so far...

[Reply #3 on:]

Double post, as the best Picard, TV Picard, is coming back.



For now I can pretend it won't suck ;)

[Reply #4 on:]

I put an approximate of 500 but I think I have seen more, for years I have seen it and I love it.

Now I am seeing it by cinecalidad that mounted several chapters in HD although they do not believe it

[Reply #5 on:]

I went with 501-600. I've seen all of TOS (multiple times); all of DS9 and Voyager; most of TNG; some of Enterprise and a few of TAS (for which I have the prose paperbacks, somewhere).

[Reply #6 on:]

Oh, I wouldn't dare estimate it sober...fortunately not a present worry. DS9 and ENT I've seen perhaps 1/4 or 1/3 of each. And all of TOS TNG VOY, the first two many times over. And I binged VOY in about three weeks, iirc.

And I've been watching TOS since the original broadcasts aired.

I'll have to ponder this one.

[Reply #7 on:]

I've seen all of the original series many, many times.  I've seen some of the animated series; I don't know if I've seen every episode, but I'd like to.  I've seen all of The Next Generation, probably multiple times.

I've seen some of Deep Space Nine and Voyager.  I watched the first few episodes of Enterprise, realized that it wasn't really Star Trek anymore, and stopped watching.  I haven't seen any of the later stuff, and don't want to.

[Reply #8 on:]

DS9 would be a perfect animated series if done in the same style as the first!

Imagine all of the talking, face zoom ins, and cutaways to recycled running animation!

[Reply #9 on:]

You know, it might be hearsay in these parts, but up until recently I've totally avoided Star Trek. I got all the pop culture references because shows I've watched over the years like Futurama, Family Guy and South Park have been so steeped in TOS references, but I had never actually sat through one full movie or episode of any of the TV shows.

I kind of went "Screw it" recently and started working my way through the original series and I've been really enjoying it. I had envisioned Star Trek as a completely different thing in my mind and I don't know why. I always imagined it as this serialized thing you had to watch in order with these really long running plot lines, kind of like modern TV, and I always hated that kind of thing. I have no idea why I had that impression. It's damn near the opposite of that. I'm about 15 episodes in. I've especially enjoyed The Enemy Within, Dagger of the Mind and Balance of Terror so far.

[Reply #10 on:]

Yeah, aside from "The Menagerie," which is a two-part episode, they're all self-contained stories.  You can pretty much watch them in any order.  Star Trek is almost like one of those sci-fi anthology series, like The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits, except for the fact that the same group of characters are in every episode.

[Reply #11 on:]

You'll thoroughly enjoy the animated series too!

[Reply #12 on:]

So I'm pretty far in season two now. I think Mirror, Mirror has been my favourite episode so far.

Also at this point I can only conclude that despite being a lifelong fan of Star Wars from the time I was about 11 or 12 years old, Star Trek is, in fact, far superior. I'm only on the original series and already I feel there have already been a handful of episodes that have eclipsed Star Wars by themselves. That doesn't even take Next Generation and the movies into account which I have not watched yet.

[Reply #13 on:]

I don't even try to compare the two.  They're very different sorts of things.

I like them both.

[Reply #14 on:]

(Edit: @ newhook_1:)

TNG has a different "feel" to it, and I have to admit that it took me a while to adjust to it after being so invested in TOS. If you find you feel the same, try to stay with it.

The movies are a mixed bag, though there's almost universal agreement on which is the best. Personally, I also like a couple of the supposedly weaker ones: on a second viewing you know the direction they are going in, and can enjoy them for what they are.

DS9 is more linear and does have progressive story arcs, but it's worth sticking with it. Again, I initially had issues, but once I got into it I generally preferred it over TNG.

Voyager can be divisive. There tends to be a lot of hate for the characters, especially the ST equivalent of Jar-Jar. I don't think it's as bad as some make it out to be, but it definitely isn't the strongest series of the franchise.

After Voyager, it all goes horribly wrong. Though I haven't seen any of the most recent stuff, so maybe it was just a case of the prequel curse striking again.

[Reply #15 on:]

Voyager can be divisive. There tends to be a lot of hate for the characters, especially the ST equivalent of Jar-Jar.

Janeway?

[Reply #16 on:]

I was thinking of Neelix. I just find him really, really annoying, but ymmv.

[Reply #17 on:]

Neelix is awful, but at least he's more interesting than Chakotay, who the writers all entirely forgot to give anything resembling a single personality trait.

[Reply #18 on:]

Also, wrt Chakotay, they relied on a "Native American Sage" as their reference for anything related to the character's cultural background. I can't recall the details but the guy was a complete fraud.

[Reply #19 on:]

I just counted and aparently i saw 663 episodes of any star trek series

Not changed my opinion.. still the best of all was DS9

TNG had its moments but overall the ridicolous premise of the ship carrying everyone's families arround, the endless killing of redshirts and the aparent effort of making everyone else in the federation look bad or incompetent..among some other stuff spoiled it quite a bit..
At least they did some lasting stuff creating continuity (like when they found out about the ships warp engines were hurting some species in other dimension wich made the federation impose speed restrictions for a while until a solution was found) and some arcs were pretty good.. usually containing romulans or the borg

[Reply #20 on:]

I don't even try to compare the two.  They're very different sorts of things.

I like them both.

There's room in my heart for both. The original Star Wars Trilogy and the Expanded Universe novels will always be a huge part of my teenage years, the prequels to a lesser extent. Right now though if you twisted my arm and made me pick which one I like better, I'd pick Star Trek, which I never expected going in because I always considered myself a Star Wars guy.

(Edit: @ newhook_1:)

TNG has a different "feel" to it, and I have to admit that it took me a while to adjust to it after being so invested in TOS. If you find you feel the same, try to stay with it.

The movies are a mixed bag, though there's almost universal agreement on which is the best. Personally, I also like a couple of the supposedly weaker ones: on a second viewing you know the direction they are going in, and can enjoy them for what they are.

DS9 is more linear and does have progressive story arcs, but it's worth sticking with it. Again, I initially had issues, but once I got into it I generally preferred it over TNG.

Voyager can be divisive. There tends to be a lot of hate for the characters, especially the ST equivalent of Jar-Jar. I don't think it's as bad as some make it out to be, but it definitely isn't the strongest series of the franchise.

After Voyager, it all goes horribly wrong. Though I haven't seen any of the most recent stuff, so maybe it was just a case of the prequel curse striking again.

I assume the movie that's considered the best is II. Unfortunately, the ending has already been spoiled for me because it's such a big part of the pop culture zeitgeist. I'm still looking forward to it after seeing the episode that set it up, though.

My intention was to watch TOS, NG and the original 10 movies, the other stuff didn't interest me all that much. If you're telling me Deep Space Nine is worth it though, I'll check it out. I'm watching episodes at a rate of about one a day because I have two kids and a full-time job, so it will take me a while to get to Deep Space Nine all the same.

Are the reboot movies directed by JJ Abrams worth watching?

[Reply #21 on:]

I haven't seen the Abrams movies, but the fact that they're a reboot probably answers your question.  I mean, when was the last time you saw a reboot that was worth watching?

You should definitely watch the first six movies, after you finish the original series.  Ignore all the nonsense about the even-numbered ones being good, and the odd-numbered ones being bad; all six of them are good, although some are better than others, and yes, the second movie is the best one.

[Reply #22 on:]

Agreed on the movie watch order. If the first one feels a bit off, please don't give up. Stylistically it's a bit of an outlier: the following ones are more cohesive. Next should come TNG, as the remaining four films feature characters from that series. Given where you are in the franchise, I'd say the reboot movies are very low priority at the moment. They are not my favourites and violate the original timeline, but do have some humorous moments and are not completely terrible, but I'd class them as a distraction at this point.

If you don't like long-running story arcs, DS9 may not appeal. That said, it's the closest ST gets to a political and military saga along the lines of Star Wars or Babylon 5. There are standalone episodes, but major plot threads run through the seasons and take time to resolve. I'm almost tempted to say that if you find it difficult to get into TNG after the first six movies, give DS9 a try instead. The problem with that would be that DS9 references events and characters established in TNG, so you would be missing out on context. If you're okay with going in 'cold' with minimal exposition, it may work: but I suspect others will step in and say it's a bad idea.

[Reply #23 on:]

I would throw in that, even though season 1 & 2 of TNG get a bad rap in some quarters, they are worth pushing through. There are some genuinely bad episodes in there, but most of them are at least decent, and many are good* (IMHO etc).

* esp Home Soil

[Reply #24 on:]

Yeah, The Next Generation takes a season or two to really find its footing (and it doesn't help that some of the early episodes are basically remakes of original series episodes with the new cast), but once it does, it's really good (different from the original series, but still good), and there are some really good episodes in the first two seasons as well.

[Reply #25 on:]

  I mean, when was the last time you saw a reboot that was worth watching?

Battlestar Galactica and Space battleship Yamato beg to differ

[Reply #26 on:]

I'll have to take your word for it, Javier.  I've never seen the reboots of either one.  I did enjoy watching the original versions on television years ago.

Okay, so Star Blazers isn't technically the original version of Yamato, but you know what I mean.

[Reply #27 on:]

I haven't seen Space Battleship Yamato, but I can vouch for BSG... some trail-off in rivitingness towards the end (at least that's the consensus afaik), but very very good TV. The pilot draws in all of your attention; if you're anything like me you won't be looking at your phone while it's on.

Roland Moore of 1990s Star Trek was the creator. It's got much more of the DS9 point of view as opposed to a TNG point of view; it's "military sci fi".

[Reply #28 on:]

The original Battlestar Galactica was one of the best sci-fi shows on television, along with Star Trek and Buck Rogers.  The Viper is one of my favorite starfighter designs, and the Cylons are probably the best evil robots ever designed.  In the remake they're androids that look just like humans, right?  I'm sure that saved a lot of money from the costume budget, but it's not nearly as cool as that glowing red eye scanning back and forth.

[Reply #29 on:]

It's got human-looking cylons as well as the glowing-red-eyes chrome cylons. The robo-cylons are CGI that, if I'm honest, looks a bit dated. But, they're scary enough when they need to be. The human-looking cylons bring some paranoia for the viewer and for the characters (is X a cylon?!), which is a regular theme in the story.

I've seen a bit of the original BSG, I should watch through some more of it. My older brother was a fan of it back in the day; there was a BSG jigsaw puzzle in my house for years that always looked very, very cool. I don't think that 1970s miniature model look for sci fi was ever surpassed.

[Reply #30 on:]

Sorry, but the original Battlestar Galactica was one of the worst SciFi shows on television. There was no science, basically. Tektronix created some great visual displays for the sets and the ships were kind of cool-looking. And for the most part, from a writing point of view, the "science" involved in the "SciFi" was non-existent. From my memory, anyway.

[Reply #31 on:]

  Sorry, but people don't watch sci-fi shows on television for the science.

It's got human-looking cylons as well as the glowing-red-eyes chrome cylons. The robo-cylons are CGI that, if I'm honest, looks a bit dated. But, they're scary enough when they need to be. The human-looking cylons bring some paranoia for the viewer and for the characters (is X a cylon?!), which is a regular theme in the story.

Cylons disguised as humans did appear in the spin-off/sequel series Galactica 1980, so the idea isn't actually a new one, but yeah, they do allow for a different sort of conflict than just dogfights in space.

[Reply #32 on:]

BSG remake, when it's good, is good because it does an excellent job of dramatizing the military and politics.

I've been re-watching Season 4 of TNG recently. Phaser banks and militarism take a back seat to diplomacy, understanding, and inquiry (with some exceptions of course). 'Future Imperfect', for example, started off as a galactic-war-politics theme, but ended up with personal sympathy towards alien life as its theme. I do miss having that sort of show, so much other sci-fi is just space-action and space-palace-intrigue.

[Reply #33 on:]

Have you seen Babylon 5?  It seems like you might enjoy it.

[Reply #34 on:]

Discovery : Bad
Picard: Awful
Lower Decks: Seriously? Just Fuck off.

Star Trek in the name really doesn't mean anything anymore.

[Reply #35 on:]

It hasn't ever since Gene Roddenberry died.

[Reply #36 on:]

Roddenberry was of course critical to the genesis of Trek. I don't know how much involvement he had in the later series, but Roddenberry's Star Trek ethos clearly permeates the ST fabric up to and including Enterprise. Not knowing jack about Trek production, I'd always guessed that Rick Berman was the person most responsible for keeping Star Trek grounded in its own universe, so to speak. Just because you have a vision and initially implement that vision does not necessarily mean that you're the best person to continue that vision. cough, The Phantom Menace, cough.

Babylon 5 was a lot of fun, and it was cool to be able to say that the show's CGI rendering was (at least at first) done using the same PC I had at home, a Commodore Amiga Thanks, JMS!

A couple of my hardcore trekkie friends are quite fond of Picard, which I haven't yet seen.

Caught the last ten minutes of the first Discovery ep the other night, and watched the second ep last night. It was entertaining, if looking a bit like Michael Bay was an assistant director...but then, ST-TNG seemed overly simplistic with 2-dimensional characters at first and didn't impress me at all in the beginning, and it's now very enjoyable to me. I need time to let the characters develop and figure out my own take on them and not sweat the writing for now. And I'm confident enough that I'll enjoy the series that I've ordered the first two seasons on physical media

[Reply #37 on:]

Roddenberry was of course critical to the genesis of Trek. I don't know how much involvement he had in the later series, but Roddenberry's Star Trek ethos clearly permeates the ST fabric up to and including Enterprise.

It clearly permeates everything up to and including the end of The Next Generation.  Everything after that seems to have been made by people who didn't really seem to get what Roddenberry had been doing wirh Star Trek.  Or maybe they did get it, but decided to do something else anyway.  I don't know.

Maybe it wasn't really Roddenberry who was responsible for that.  Maybe it was Berman or someone else.  I don't know.  I just know that what came before was different from everything that came after.

Babylon 5 was a lot of fun, and it was cool to be able to say that the show's CGI rendering was (at least at first) done using the same PC I had at home, a Commodore Amiga Thanks, JMS!

Lucky.  I only had the 64, and then, much later, a 128.

[Reply #38 on:]

Yeah, I got my first look at an Amiga 1000...in Tokyo! At a major Commodore office. This is only about a year and a half after the Apple McIntosh launched. With its glorious black and white in-built monitor. Bought an A1000 two weeks later.

So I am enjoying Star Trek: Discovery. It's a lot of fun. I just watched the debut episode in its entirety for the first time. And though I've seen only three episodes so far, surely it's no worse than the first few episodes of ST-TNG were, back in the day. I'm definitely looking forward to watching more

[Reply #39 on:]

Well.. B5 used quite a lot of Amigas

(tecnically found this:
The B5 effects teams, both at Foundation and at NDI, use Lightwave 3D by NewTek and specialized software to design and render the visual effects. For the pilot, the effects were rendered on a network of Amiga computers; later, Foundation used 12 Pentium PCs and 5 DEC Alpha workstations for 3D rendering and design, and 3 Macintoshes for piecing together on-set computer displays)


B5 still stands as one my top ever space themed shows ever .. and its due to the history arcs it develops ..its one of those shows where the main cast is actually not the best part of the show.. but the main history arcs and several of the secondary chracters are delightfull..


In the end the main central cast was mostly there as a vehicle to take you throught the history.. for example the dynamics and histories of Londo and G'Kar were inmenselly more developed and deep than Sheridan or Delen's .. Even Garibaldi has a fantastic arc in season 4 involving a fantastic Walter Koenig as Alfred Bexter..
Too bad some of the sets (there are some sets that even back then i really want to ask whoever designed it what the hell they were smoking) , most alien costumes (tought in this aspect is not worst than any contemporary sci-fi show ) and and some early "semi-stand alone" episodes are "not good" to say the least and season 1 is a bit slow usually throws off many people starting the series ..but even season 1 wich is a presentation and starting season puts several plots into motion correctly starting and presenting them wich will be full blown in next seasons.

And the Earth whole arc is delightfull.. its even downright scary because it takes 2 and a half seasons to slowly develop into what will blow away badly and you will see it bit by bit and its extremely familiar things you can see everyday.. i even renember a scene where an Earth Goberment is talking to Sheridan about how things are back home and her logic was that they were a happy planet because everything that could be wrong was some conspiracy, a disident, a non patriotic or fault of lazy people or aliens mining their society.. i renember someone asking JMS if he wrote this based on the rise of the Nazi party and he said they didnt need to go that far back in history to see this stuff .. not that far at all..

Thats one of the reasons i also love the Expanse.. it has quite similar workings to B5 in that the main central cast is not that super interesting (tought they have good histories, specially Amos) but they are there mostly to take you throught the main history and arcs.. while the "main secondary" cast is inmenselly more interesting