Star Trek - The Bear and Badger

superflyninja

I get that times have changed and viewers may want different things now. But I think you can hit both the demographic tickboxes and string a decent story together. Discovery had the budget, I just dont think Discovery had the patience.

They dont take time to build up the characters. Can you imagine Kirk every time he sent a nameless redshirt down to die on a planet weeping and proclaiming his love for said nobody?
IMO You cant have these big emotional beats payoff without first investing the time in the characters affected. If you dont at best it feels artificial and forced.

Im watching The Walking Dead for the first time. Im near enough the start of season 8 now. That show hits with some really big emotional wallops. Because characters you have spent time with and gotten to know are affected. It isnt just someone who walks in and suddenly Rick says "yo, man hotdiggedy I love you bruh". Yes I understand TWD has longer seasons and so it has room for character episodes and such but its like the writers of Discovery arent even aware that they need to flesh out the characters.

What is the solution? Fucked if I know. Just please, please make the story even a little bit more logical. I present the Nacelle problem as my best example of this.

The metal face pilot woman. She spent half the series (like Giorgio it seems) getting random bouts of zoning out and it seemed like something was amiss with her. What happened to that?

monkey

PTSD. It was fixed instantly by her doing a super-dangerous suicide mission which she enjoyed.

Roujin

handsofblue wrote:

omg that would be amazing. Can Dutch serve with her?

Now we're motherfuckin talking.

monkey

It’s Star Trek for girls. At least its what Star Trek for girls looks like in the collective consciousness of 21 executive producers. Its fine for them to make a Star Trek for girls. It’s just very bad. Very very bad.

They made a Star Trek for Dads. Picard. That was even worse.

Roujin

Get woke, go broke!

Dinostar77

monkey wrote:

It’s Star Trek for girls. At least its what Star Trek for girls looks like in the collective consciousness of 21 executive producers. Its fine for them to make a Star Trek for girls. It’s just very bad. Very very bad.

They made a Star Trek for Dads. Picard. That was even worse than this.

This post is great

monkey

I'm rewatching TNG. Apart from the odd episode I haven't watched it since the days of early evening BBC2 and £9.99 for two episodes on VHS. Season 1 seems very black. Half the scenes are shot in the dark. Data's character is all over the place at the moment. It really feels like a continuation of the original series at this stage. Same sort of set ups. There's a couple of parts where you can feel it going more like later TNG. The quality is mostly very poor.

This might turn into a log of every TNG episode or I might get bored and give up at any point.

Encounter at Far Point (S01 E01)
God this is wooden. Some of the awkward pauses between two characters speaking are like they're waiting for a player to select their dialogue option. Two stories mashed together. It's quite good. I liked it. The potential love interest between Riker and Troi isn't so much slipped in as repeatedly hammered into the viewers face.

The Naked Now (S01 E02)
Piss poor. Gravity waves make everyone horny. Dr Crusher and Picard are all over each other. It's nauseating. Wesley nearly kills everyone on board then plays some small part in saving them and everybody loves him.

Code of Honour (S01 E03)
The Enterprise needs to get a vaccine from an alien race of offensive African stereotypes. The crew discuss the difficulty in lowering themselves to abide by their inferior and primitive customs. Their leader is lying, greedy, thieving, misogynistic, manipulative and wants Yar to kill his wife in a deathmatch that he engineers. He ends up having to accept permanent cuck status as a second husband while his wife gets boned by his old bodyguard.
Outrageously racist. Should come with a warning.

The Last Outpost (S01 E04)
Following the Ferengis, both ships lose power in orbit of a planet. This leads to a genuinely tense and well-done stand off, followed by temporary alliance, then betrayal. The planet houses the last guardian on the border of an ancient, collapsed civilisation. Riker tells him how great humans are and he returns power to the ships. The Ferengi are ridiculous idiots, almost like chimps. There’s one big plot hole, late in the story, the first in four episodes (it may have been covered in dialogue that I missed).

Where No One Has Gone Before (S01 E05)
Decent until the last 5 minutes. It goes a bit Discovery when the crew have to propel themselves to the other side of the universe with the power of their own positive thinking. Wesley gives moral support to a magic alien by holding his hand and is rewarded by being made Acting Ensign.

Lonely Among Us (S01 E06)
Wild episode where the ship accidentally picks up a pure energy being that jumps around and inhabits the crew and the ship. Jumps into Picard who then beams off the ship into an energy cloud so Picard and the energy being can be together forever. It's unclear whether Picard was a willing party to this or not. Hours later, Picard's energy pattern is found floating around on it's own. Troi says she senses that the union didn't work out. They scoop him up as energy which lets Data rematerialise him. He has no memory of his gay space adventure, failing to resolve the issue of whether or not he went voluntarily.
There's a comedy subplot about the Enterprise transporting delegates from two feuding races. And a bizarre sequence of events where the only Indian crew member I can remember on Star Trek gets bossed about by Picard, then gets zapped by the energy and dies, then no one gives a solitary fuck about it. In the next scene, Riker, whose previous scene was with the deceased, is now having a big laugh about Data smoking a pipe.

Justice (S01 E07)
The Enterprise visits an orgy planet full of blonde-haired, blue-eyed unattractive sex wieners. Picard thinks it's a good idea to send Wesley, a minor, down with the away team. Wes then plays some lame catching game with people that are called 'children' but clearly post-pubescent young adults. One has chest hair. He treads on some plants, a crime punishable by death. Picard gives a speech about justice which gets him out of it. Really poor. The worst one yet. The god of the sex wankers is a dimension-hopping space ship.

Casting and costume design seem hell-bent on making these swingers as revolting as possible.

You're under a vest: Bonus points to the artist or costume designer who was given the task of devising what the police on a sex planet should look like.

Time_on_my_hands

TNG had a pretty crap start - as do most Treks - I binged TNG a couple of years ago and if it weren't for the nostalgia kick I'd have skipped forward a lot of the early episodes.

I'm surprised Riker didn't go AWOL on the planet of the sex wankers.

Funkstain

amazing. please continue forever

RedDave2

Funkstain wrote:

amazing. please continue forever

Make it so.

Not a hard fast rule, but early 90s TV shows tend to start with a very weak first season (looking at you Buffy) before being able to find their feet and build. Now, I think it might be the opposite with shows starting with a bang and then out living their concept.

Diluted Dante

monkey wrote:

It really feels like a continuation of the original series at this stage.

The Naked Now is pretty much a redo of a TOS episode isn't it?

monkey

Yeah that’s mentioned. They use the cure that they found in that old episode but it doesn’t work and Crusher needs to alter it.

I think it’s the one where Spock is hanging upside down from a tree.

Dinostar77

I'd forgotten how hit and miss season one was. Season 2 has some classics, Measure of a Man, Time Squared, Q Who? From memory season 3, Yesterdays Enterprise and The Best of Both Worlds (part 1).

EvilRedEye

Interesting. CBS All Access is getting relaunched as Paramount+, which might be getting a UK rollout at some point. So we might eventually see an end to Star Trek being available on existing streaming services over here.

Diluted Dante

I suppose pirating it might be fun.

poprock

Because what we need is more streaming services.

These things all need consolidating into umbrella organisations so we don’t have to subscribe to a hundred different things. Like channels on a network. If only someone had thought up a TV business model like that, eh?

RedDave2

Or just run one to two services at a time. I've dipped in and out of Disney plus, prime video and (erm) WWE network and its a great way to mix up your content. Stay loyal to none.

poprock

But that sounds like I would need to make an effort.

Time_on_my_hands

poprock wrote:

But that sounds like I would need to make an effort.

Agreed. But the process will probably be:

1. Studios get greedy and expect customers to sub to several streaming services because of the fragmented market.
2. Piracy increases
3. Studios lobby for harsher anti-piracy measures
4. eventually the distributors allow content on more than one platform

It's the same as live service gaming - monthly subscription fees is what these companies want.

poprock

OR …

Some media producers find that subscriptions plateau or even fall over time and backtrack – because the old model of licensing content to someone else actually made them more profit.

The biggest players with the deepest pockets buy up the smaller ones, folding their services into one (or bundling them into one package deal).

The biggest players build a widening gap between themselves and the others in service quality and therefore customer loyalty, and eventually the individual studios/producers all start falling into line as part of their bigger, better offer.

I dunno. These are uncharted waters. All I’m sure of is that there are getting to be too many services on offer and some form of consolidation would be in the interest of most consumers.

EvilRedEye

Lower Decks drops on Prime tomorrow!

poprock

Nice.

EvilRedEye

I watched the first two episodes and it seems... OK, I guess?

Birdorf

Correct.

Season 3 of Discovery sounds great. I'll be resubbing to Netfix soon, looking forward to it.

beano

EvilRedEye wrote:

I watched the first two episodes and it seems... OK, I guess?

The opening of the first episode of Lower Decks seemed great but I had to pause because I had to go into meeting.

In regards to Discovery, it's certain there is a conservative/progressive divide. Whilst thinking about the comments in this thread over time randomly last night, and in particular the critisms people have put, like not knowing who everyone on the bridge was and all that I thoigh about how past bridges were framed and tempt touched on it in the sense of TNG. There is certainly something about how the arcs have been written for Discovery which is wildly different to TNG and past Treks, the episodes of which I've found can often be isolated, in as much as really it doesn't matter what order they're watched if you just want a Trek fix. You cannot get that from Discovery which to its credit has been unashamedly bash and queer and ignorant of what Trek fans of old expected.

I guess the ultimate problem of Trek is were decades and decades on from the originals so justifying techie bollox as some sort of achievable future just isn't worth it, most sci-fi of yore contextually should already exist and it doesn't so if you are interested in making something which is fiction and futurist and science like then why not tackle the patriarchal hetronormative yt liberal tropes that have dogged so much of it?

Anyway let's see what yous think of Lower Decks.

Inabit

EvilRedEye

beano wrote:

In regards to Discovery, it's certain there is a conservative/progressive divide. Whilst thinking about the comments in this thread over time randomly last night, and in particular the critisms people have put, like not knowing who everyone on the bridge was and all that I thoigh about how past bridges were framed and tempt touched on it in the sense of TNG. There is certainly something about how the arcs have been written for Discovery which is wildly different to TNG and past Treks, the episodes of which I've found can often be isolated, in as much as really it doesn't matter what order they're watched if you just want a Trek fix. You cannot get that from Discovery which to its credit has been unashamedly bash and queer and ignorant of what Trek fans of old expected. I guess the ultimate problem of Trek is were decades and decades on from the originals so justifying techie bollox as some sort of achievable future just isn't worth it, most sci-fi of yore contextually should already exist and it doesn't so if you are interested in making something which is fiction and futurist and science like then why not tackle the patriarchal hetronormative yt liberal tropes that have dogged so much of it?

I think you are strawmanning us a bit here. The fact that Discovery includes actual LGBT representation and, in particular, non-binary representation early enough to actually make a difference to non-binary people (as opposed to the LGB bit where the franchise pissed about so much the representation became more about avoiding further embarrassment than actually being progressive) and a strong focus on female characters is great.

But the writing is bad.

Also, let's not forget that Discovery doesn't have a perfect track record of LGBT representation. Until they awkwardly revived Culber in Season 2, the Stamets and Culber plotline fell right into the 'tragic gays' trope, i.e. THE major trope that distinguishes homophobic narratives about gays from actual gay representation.

Tempy

Ye, diversity good, rest of it a load of balls. Trek is a perfect crucible stuff for this shite to be good, it was already doing fun stuff with expectations back in TNG. Disco just seems like someone but a modern TV straitjacket on Trek.

monkey

The Battle (S01 E08)
The Ferengi show up with the derelict of Picard’s last ship, the Stargazer. Last involved in blowing up a different Ferengi ship using the Picard Manoeuvre that the rest of the crew suck his dick about. Currently there’s no defence against the move. The captain of the present Ferengi ship has a convoluted revenge scheme against Picard for killing his son in that battle.

A ridiculous, cheap-looking, glowing ball ends up in Picard’s bedroom. The Ferengi has his own Master Ball that he strokes and fucks about with to give Picard headaches, bad dreams, delusions, and eventually he completely mind fucks him. Picard goes walkabout on to the Stargazer, thinks he’s back in the battle and tries to Picard Manoeuvre the Enterprise. Riker gets through to him by shouting at him. Data formulates a defence against the move anyway.

Actually quite like this. Wesley hardly saves the day at all. Special mention to the Ferengi First Officer, who has few lines but somehow manages to slip a realistic, nuanced performance in amid the acting carnage surrounding him.

Picard looks at a ball.

Picard: Where is Bok?
Riker: Removed from command, sir, and placed under guard for his act of personal vengeance – seems there was no... profit in it.
Picard: In revenge, there never is.

Hide and "Q" (S01 E09)
Q gives Riker Q powers. A great idea that this episode should have set into motion before the opening credits. Or at least by the end of the first act. Instead, most of the time is spent with Q magicking an away team to a planet so they can have a battle against "animal things" dressed as Napoleonic soldiers. This leaves about 10 minutes for Riker to get the powers, turn his back on them, become corrupted, turn into an ultra-prick and then back into standard Riker.

He ages Wesley into a 25 year old virgin as a ‘gift’. Picard reckons the crew will reject Riker’s offer of other life-changing gifts, and they do, which bursts Riker’s bubble, so then Q takes away his powers, I dunno. It doesn’t make much sense. A waste of a good premise.

It would have been better for everyone if this moment had stuck.
But maybe not the next one.

Haven (S01 E10)
A sentient wedding invitation arrives to invite Troi to her own arranged marriage. The groom is a smug, turtle-necked, beatnik doctor. Riker, having ignored Troi since the pilot, is now mega pissed. Troi looks super fit for most of this episode.

A plague ship rocks up bearing the last 8 surviving members of some alien race. A woman (who is no Troi) is onboard and beatnik has seen her every night in his dreams since he was a child. He turns down marriage to Troi for the exciting opportunity to confine himself on a plague ship with dream lady (who is no dream lady) and the other infected creeps, and work on a cure. This was ok apart from how stupid it all was. Lwaxana Troi is in this one. She's less annoying than I remembered. It's all so stilted most of the time that anyone with a bit of life in their character is a nice change.

The Big Goodbye (S01 E11)
Dreadful. Sex Wankers is still the worst but this gets close.
Picard and others get trapped in a holodeck sim of 1940s San Francisco as some private dicks. It's never explained why they get trapped. The game turns deadly when Ensign Nobody gets shot. No explanation why.

Meanwhile out on the ship, some aliens are getting dramatic as they need to be greeted by the ship’s captain or they'll shit the bed. LaForge is useless at freeing the Captain. Wesley comes along and instantly starts sorting it out. He later reports back that he can get them out but, if it goes wrong, they'll die. Riker, with LaForge just standing there, tells Wesley, an acting ensign, to perform the risky operation that might kill 3 senior crew members including his own mother.

Really bad. Most of the first half of the episode is very basic exposition explaining what a holodeck is. The second half is the worst film noir pastiche you'll ever see. Picard gets arrested, questioned, released, has a nauseating romantic moment with Crusher, then I don’t know what's supposed to be happening but Jo, the old gangster from Reservoir Dogs, shows up playing that same character. Then dies when trying to walk out of the Holodeck.
Strange. Bad and strange.

Datalore (S01 E12)
Of mixed quality. They find Data’s brother Lore and assemble him. He disables Data and takes his place and wants to feed the crew to the crystalline entity, a giant space snowflake that also ate Data's colony at Lore's request. It’s never clear why Lore likes doing this.

The snowflake shows up. In a cunning ruse to get the ship to lower it's shields, Lore (at this point pretending to be Data) tells Picard that they should scare the snowflake off by transporting a tree into space. Then blow up the tree.*

Picard instantly agrees with the plan to blow up a tree. Honestly, straight away. It’s the quickest I’ve seen him come to a decision so far. I don't know where they're getting the tree from but it never appears. Wesley was the first to spot the switcheroo, gets bawled out by Picard for making the accusation, then he saves Data in a fight by transporting Lore directly into space. Straight-up murdering him. When asked where Lore went, Wes just replies that he's gone "permanently". Wesley did a murder and no one asked or cared**.

Spiner's good in this, which saves it. I like his Lore / Data schtick.

* and use the leaves to make a dress for his wife who is also his brother
**I know he comes back but they don't know that yet.

Prop Watch: The Crystalline Entity is one of the first uses of CGI. But the star of the show is this unconvincing, disembodied, latex head.

b0r1s

I am loving this. Keep going please.

Birdorf

Yes!

I've got one more episode of Below Decks to go, I've been saving it for a special occasion as I've thoroughly enjoyed it. So many Trek nods.

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