Star Trek: The Next Generation Rewatch (oh god no)

[petril]

there's a good 2-3 years of pottering about with Bajor before the war stuff starts. it's a slow drip from the end of Season 2(?) until it all kicks off much later

[bgmnts]

Alright then fuck it I'll get stuck into it after TNG.

I was NOT expecting a Die Hard/Cliffhanger episode, that fucking ruled! Picard tooling up and stalking space thieves through the corridors of the Enterprise with a crossbow is fucking amazing and I would have watched an extra 20 minutes of it.

[daf]

See you on the DS9 thread! :)

[bgmnts]

Look forward to it.

Horny Picard getting his flute on. What a lad.

I don't like Troi in the regulation uniform, she's better in her own gear. All because Ronny Cox reprimanded her half a season ago.

[petril]

IDEA FOR A STAR TREK CHARACTER: Command Level dick turns up and is basically Ronnie Pickering at people

[bgmnts]

Riker going mental and having no idea what was real and what wasn't was really bloody unnerving and unsettling. Have always found those kinds of stories the most horrible.

I think Frakes was exceptional here.

[Blumf]

I don't like Troi in the regulation uniform, she's better in her own gear.

I'm sorry, but you're wrong! About time she put the effort in to look professional. (Actually do like the loose arc of Troi getting serious with command track training. Some rare and welcome character development)

[bgmnts]

I'm sorry, but you're wrong! About time she put the effort in to look professional. (Actually do like the loose arc of Troi getting serious with command track training. Some rare and welcome character development)

Fair enough, I quite like the fact that someone stands out a bit, like Gainan or Ensign Ro with her earring.

In fact, where IS Ensign Ro? She joined the crew at the start of series 5 I think and she only appeared in three or four episodes. I assumed she was going to be a character that would upset the harmony of the crew and add some drama but that hasn't happened yet.

[daf]

There was some idea of Ro spinning off into DS9 - like O'Brien did, but she didn't fancy it (wanted to make films I think). She would have been what became Kira in DS9 - basically the same character, but more ginger.

[Lemming]

Set up an AI to generate infinite TNG episodes.





Favourite:

[bgmnts]

Ha!

[bgmnts]

Final season time now, some duffers already. Thought the two-parter wasn't the best either.

[bgmnts]

This episode called explicitly for a Bajoran to escort a Cardassian federation operative back to Cardassian space, so you'd think this would be a perfect Ensign Ro episode but they brought back one of the disgraced cadets from one the Wesley Crusher is a cock episodes.

It's such a shame they just discarded that character.

[petril]

yeah apparently Ro Laren was going to fill the Kira Nerys role on DS9, but Michelle Forbes didn't want to commit so much so Ro was casually binned off

[bgmnts]

Journey's End.

What an absolute shiter. The only good that came of this was the resolution and untimely death (off-screen in my imagination) of Wesley Crusher.

Although, as someone who went full on spiral as I was close to finishing my A Levels I understand Crusher bottling it. Still a cunt though.

Actually went back to see Lemming and daf's reviews for this and they were great.

[Lemming]

Absolute nightmare of an episode. Still can't get over the colony leader saying he has to stay because of "the trees and mountains" or whatever, and Picard sitting their starry-eyed and full of admiration.

Made even worse by Star Trek: Insurrection being the same thing spun out over 100 gruelling minutes.

[bgmnts]

Yeah, fuck that I'm not watching that then.

Did the producers and writers know this was the last season before it started? There is a LOT of finality here in these episodes; ending character arcs, tying up loose ends, introducing DS9 characters and referencing the show a lot etc.

And I won't lie it all seems to be ending very darkly, warp speed tearing space apart, Klingons seemingly doomed to endless infighting, Romulan-Human relations may be even more fucked, Crusher was sort of raped by a ghost, Data had to kill Lore etc. I suppose this is why I'm hesitant to watch DS9 considering the state the galaxy looks like it'll be in.

[Lemming]

Apparently they knew they were about to become a film franchise (which crashed after four films, lol), and that a few of the actors were saying they felt the time had come to call it a day. I'm not sure how widespread that attitude was among the cast and crew, but there definitely seems to me as a viewer to be a tangible atmosphere of nobody being arsed anymore and a lot of low quality scripts making it to production without getting a proper looking-over.

DS9 is indeed pretty moody and downbeat. We're only on season two in the rewatch but I remember it getting much, much grimmer towards the end, to the point of essentially becoming an accidental comedy at times by taking the grimdarkness far beyond reason. It's counterbalanced nicely by Voyager's almost unflappable optimism and chirpiness, I suppose.

[petril]

yeah DS9 has some fun comedy and pottering about in between all the heavy war crimes/Bajor is seriously fucked/the two wars(yes there's two)/quick do some weird spooky religious shit to get rid of Dukat and Kai Winn

the one where you find out

Spoiler alert

Bashir's been missing for a while is really good, amazing use of the change in uniforms to highlight it

[close]

[bgmnts]

Well, that was a fucking great finale, fair play. The series was obviously on the downslide but that made it worthwhile. Really bookending the show by making it a Q test of Picard and humanity, like in the first episode.

Weirdly, in a retrospective that's tacked on Netflix after the finale, they describe Q as a villain. I've never really seen him in that light to be honest but whatever.

On to Deep Space 9 now!

[Blumf]

Weirdly, in a retrospective that's tacked on Netflix after the finale, they describe Q as a villain. I've never really seen him in that light to be honest but whatever.

Yeah, he can be an antagonist occasionally, but he's not a villain. No idea why so many people seem to think he is. He can literally click anyone, including entire races, out of existence on a whim. If Q really had villainous intentions, he'd cause a lot more damage.

[grainger]

Ah, but how do you know he hasn't?

Seriously, it depends on what scale of "villainy" you mean. Q can certainly be dark. Like when he's going to torment that race in Deja Q when he gets his powers back. Or indeed his dark tone in Farpoint. But on a smaller scale, in Qpid (which I unfortunately just rewatched), it's suggested that he's going off to plunder archaeological sites with Vash. Not galaxy-scale villany, but certainly ethically questionable.

As an aside, I don't like the concept of "villain" in Trek. TNG rarely did it. It had antagonists, but the set-up was rarely that clear cut, and it was usually the worse for it when they did. They mainly saved that for the movies, presumably because Wrath of Khan was such a perceived success that every Trek film from that point had to have "a villain". When Trek people are interviewed about one of the films they're working on, they seem to take it as given that they have to have a villain.

[grainger]

I've just read the TNG 365 book (interesting info, horrible book format). The more I read the comments from the "young guns" group of writers who dominated the later seasons of the show, the more that I started to dislike some of their attitudes. As a result of these, they constantly chafed against the world set up at the start of the show. Contrary to internet consensus, I increasingly think the setup was one of the more interesting things about TNG. I always felt that, then I wavered on it, but as I get older, the more I think it was important.

The "young guns" definitely wrote some superb episodes, but it feels that they were later actively trying to undermine aspects of the show's set up.

It makes me start to think that DS9 was them consciously taking a hammer to aspects of the Trek universe on purpose as a kind of revenge on the restrictions that they so hated to work with.

And yes, the beautiful All Good Things was an absolute love letter to the show, so I'm not saying they hated it. But they definitely hated many of the aspects that I loved.

[Lemming]

I agree with you, I had many issues with the latter seasons of DS9 (hoping to be pleasantly surprised by the rewatch though!). There was a quote I remember reading on Memory Alpha where Ira Steven Behr or someone like that was giddily enthusing about how the main characters had all become "compromised", and it jarred with me because it revealed that the writers' goals were almost totally opposed to the kind of thing I was interested in watching, and it did indeed give the impression that they were revelling in deliberately ripping the guts out of the Star Trek setting and seeing how far they could undermine TNG's original vision. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, but the way they went about it didn't click for me at all. Wish I could find the quote.

Section 31 was the big one. People (rightly) rip the piss out of nuTrek for all its sins, but Section 31 as it appeared in DS9 is easily as crap as anything Kurtzman could come up with, IMO. There's not even anything inherently wrong with the idea of a Federation black ops organisation, but Section 31, good lord.

It's funny because the original premise of TNG, if interpreted by a somewhat cynical writer, can very easily be shaped into something that lends itself to darkness and amoral protagonists in a way that I don't think DS9 ever came close to accomplishing. Episodes like "Pen Pals", "Symbiosis", and to some extent "The Neutral Zone" suggest that humanity has "progressed" to the point of becoming one of the cold-hearted all-powerful species that Kirk would bump into every other week, like the Metrons, which is a fascinating basis for a show. A group of incredibly self-assured people who are absolutely dogmatically convinced they're in the right, even as they leave a trail of corpses and suffering across the galaxy, and who've had their empathy and compassion drummed out of them by a strict indoctrination process. And they're the heroes! I'm not sure there's ever been anything quite like that, and it seems like a much more comprehensive and appropriate deconstruction of TNG's original vision than DS9's "what if there was a big war and bad men in black catsuits" idea.

[Blumf]

's funny because the original premise of TNG, if interpreted by a somewhat cynical writer, can very easily be shaped into something that lends itself to darkness and amoral protagonists in a way that I don't think DS9 ever came close to accomplishing. Episodes like "Pen Pals", "Symbiosis", and to some extent "The Neutral Zone" suggest that humanity has "progressed" to the point of becoming one of the cold-hearted all-powerful species that Kirk would bump into every other week, like the Metrons, which is a fascinating basis for a show. A group of incredibly self-assured people who are absolutely dogmatically convinced they're in the right, even as they leave a trail of corpses and suffering across the galaxy, and who've had their empathy and compassion drummed out of them by a strict indoctrination process.

That'd also work with Q, who could be seeing the soulless mess his race had turned into and wanted to avoid that fate with humanity (I think it's kinda hinted at throughout, but never nailed down. I suspect the writers hadn't really thought of it)

[grainger]

I think where we differ @Lemming , is that I definitely didn't want to see the guts ripped out of TNG's original vision. I wouldn't find that interesting, just annoying. There are plenty of SF shows with a much more dystopian view (all of them, basically, including modern Trek). I like some of them (but not modern Trek). But let us have one - just once - that isn't like that.

I wouldn't view the Federation as "cold", if you mean the Prime Directive. That's not to say that the Prime Directive is without its problems, but it makes sense to me that a responsible space-faring society might develop something like that.

In the Original Series era, we saw plenty of examples of planets corrupted by irresponsible prats from Earth turning them into Nazi worlds or whatever. With unwanted cultural contamination being so easy to do - accidentally or otherwise - it doesn't strike me as unreasonable that the Federation might have this law.

When that law also precludes intervening in disaster relief, that's when it becomes uncomfortable, and indeed Pen Pals explored this. IMO this made the episode interesting, and both sides of the issue were discussed. Arguably, the showrunners went too far with the Prime Directive when they set it up (asWorf proclaims, "the Prime Directive is an absolute!", and maybe that's the problem). But I can see how the Federation might set up such a  law, with the best of intentions.

There's a season 7 episode (Homeward, I think) where the crew stand on the bridge and watch an entire world die when they could intervene. It's no different from Pen Pals, except that the episode truly rubs the audience's face in it. "Watch as our heroes do nothing." That's not to say that the Prime Directive can't be explored - I just don't think this was the right way to go about it.

I got the impression from TNG 365 that the writer of that episode was basically trying to convince the audience that the Prime Directive is shit. And maybe that aspect of the Prime Directive is. But in doing so, he just made the characters look bad - he intentionally damaged the show to take a swing at an aspect of it that pissed him off, instead of writing something that maybe explored the absolutist aspect of it.

That all said, I am pleasantly surprised that someone else agrees with at least part of my view of TNG. I don't think I've found anyone else that remotely sees it the same way.

[bgmnts]

Yeah I am not a massive trek fan by any means but I would definitely say that the original utopian vision of TNG and humanity represented as reasonable and logical and happy, but still having imperfections, is what I think of when I think of Star Trek.

I'm enjoying DS9 but it doesn't ring as true for me because it can be relentlessly grim and seeing that leak into TNG made it bittersweet at times.

[Lemming]

I think where we differ @Lemming , is that I definitely didn't want to see the guts ripped out of TNG's original vision. I wouldn't find that interesting, just annoying.

I'm not a huge fan myself of the attempts to "deconstruct" TNG that have been done first by DS9 and then far worse by "Picard". It does seem to me though that there are opportunities for a clever writer to gently poke holes in TNG's outlook while still working within that vision - "Who Watches the Watchers" feels like a superb counterpoint to "Pen Pals", for example, which critiques and bends the Prime Directive but very deliberately avoids suggesting that the ethos behind the PD is wrong. Sadly, the way writers have gone about Star Trek revisionism has been less of that and more to just drag down TNG's optimism entirely, with creations like Section 31 and... whatever's going on in Star Trek: Picard.

Having said all that though, Voyager might be my favourite of the 90s shows simply because it staunchly refuses to make any attempt to mess around with or undermine the Star Trek ethos and instead just wholeheartedly embraces it and gives us a show about admirable heroes who travel through the galaxy trying their best to aid everyone and avoid conflict. Not always perfect, but Voyager feels like it's inviting you to revel in an exciting vision of the future, whereas I remember parts of latter-era DS9 feeling like the writers were actively taking the piss out of the viewer for expecting events to turn out positively (and less said about ST: Picard the better).

I got the impression from TNG 365 that the writer of that episode was basically trying to convince the audience that the Prime Directive is shit. And maybe that aspect of the Prime Directive is. But in doing so, he just made the characters look bad - he intentionally damaged the show to take a swing at an aspect of it that pissed him off, instead of writing something that maybe explored the absolutist aspect of it.

That's interesting, Homeward was so shocking that I did kind of wonder if it was written to deliberately revolt the viewer and turn them against the Enterprise crew. Even our anti-Prime Directive hero though, Worf's brother, turns out to be a pretty terrible guy. It'd be really interesting to sit down with the writer and get a blow-by-blow account of what the intent was behind that script.

That all said, I am pleasantly surprised that someone else agrees with at least part of my view of TNG. I don't think I've found anyone else that remotely sees it the same way.

Yes! It's a shame that "Gene's vision" has become sort of a disparaging meme in parts of the Star Trek fandom - Michael Piller (I think) wrote somewhere, maybe in the book he did about ST: Insurrection, that he was seen by other writers as a bit of an annoyance because he insisted on adhering to the "no conflict" vision of early TNG. His rationale was that a good writer should be able to work within that vision, and that writers could be pushed into creating better and more unique stories by having the usual standard tropes and plot beats removed.

I think he was definitely right - anyone can write a space battle or a story about morally murky protagonists, but it's much harder (and potentially much more interesting) to write a story about a group of people who will always cooperate, always act reasonably, and can't really be moved to violence or anger.

[grainger]

Ah, I see. I agree with you a lot more than I thought I did!

Rick Berman's been revealed as a monster in recent years for his behaviour in the workplace, but I was surprised that the TNG 365 book paints him as one of the greatest defenders of "Gene's vision", right to the end of the show. This is particularly surprising given that he was the studio guy who came onto the show in a supervising role.

You're almost selling me on Voyager. I know that you tried to do so a while back. I don't know if I can bring myself to watch it, but we'll see. Maybe if the forum does a VOY rewatch I'll join in. I didn't take part in the TNG one because I love the show so much, and I thought there would be relentless carping about it, and I'd cry. Since I don't like VOY, I can take relentless carping about it, and in fact much of that will likely come from me.

As to the "no conflict" rule... Yep. There was plenty of conflict in early TNG, but it was against a guest character (or culture), or a situation. The fact that the characters weren't always bickering was actually refreshing (although they were somewhat dull and stiff in the first year or so, but IMO that's not an inevitable feature of the no conflict rule). The writers just had to be creative with it - and they nearly always succeeded.

They did cheat though from time to time - I watched Half a Life today, and noticed that they basically brought Lwaxana Troi in to be the one who stirred things up, because none of the regular characters would in that situation - that has to be cheating a little bit.

One of things I think Ron Moore or Naren Shankar said (but it might have been someone else and I've stowed the book away, so can't check) in TNG 365 was that he liked Worf because he was the only TNG character who could misbehave and kill people and stuff.

I like that the characters try as hard as possible to stick to their principles (and them trying to achieve that leads to... what do you know? Conflict...).

That rebel Worf, ruining peoples' holidays on Risa to prove some point or other. Prick.

Anyway, I'll stop rambling now.

[grainger]

Just rewatched Redemption II (the first episode of season five) this evening. God, it's a wretched episode.Moronic Klingons butting heads and SHOUTING EVERY SINGLE LINE.

If that wasn't awful enough, there's the idiotic Sela story. The setup is so absurd yet inconsequential that Picard's reaction is to (correctly) go "o...kay. Well, I can't see that this changes anything" after the big reveal.

The only way to drive it forward and provoke a bigger reaction in Picard is to have Guinan appear and fill in the backstory. Picard: "WTF?" Guinan: "Believe me, I just KNOW".

To increase the stakes (from zero), Guinan and Sela both say that Picard "sent Yar" back in time, when that's not actually what happened.
Yar requested it and Picard initially said no.

Hey hang on, it was Guinan who persuaded Picard to give Yar permission! Between this and her glittery phaser shotgun behind the bar, I'm really starting to dislike Guinan this watch-through.

And as for all this retconning to make the story have some semblance of working - even a Tory minister wouldn't be so brazen.

There are only two good elements. The first is Worf's rejection of one aspect of Klingon "honour" at the end when he chooses not to knife a child to death, much to the disgust of his brother and the Klingon bigwigs. The other is Data's subplot where he has to shout at an anti-android racist subordinate just to get the guy to obey orders.

Also, TOS movie/TNG/DS9 Klingons look totally stupid. Only the Romulans have worse hair and clothes.