The Star Trek Thread

[Cheeky Devlin]

One of the best parts of TOS is Shatner completely hamming it up from time to time.

"The Enemy Within" - Transporter malfunctions and creates a duplicate of Kirk, with all his violent impulses and drives. Amazing scenes of "I'M CAPTAIN KIRK!!!" from the duplicate who can be told apart because he has very slight black eyeliner. Love it.

[Victor Mildew]

The first TNG series feels very much like TOS in tone and even the look. Its a very late 70s aesthetic.

[Cuttooth]

Helped by most of the away missions taking place on weird coloured sound stages.

[Squinty]

One of the best parts of TOS is Shatner completely hamming it up from time to time.

"The Enemy Within" - Transporter malfunctions and creates a duplicate of Kirk, with all his violent impulses and drives. Amazing scenes of "I'M CAPTAIN KIRK!!!" from the duplicate who can be told apart because he has very slight black eyeliner. Love it.

If you love the Shatner hamming it up, watch Boston Legal. The character he is playing is basically playing the worst excesses of William Shatner.

He's one of the best things about that show.

[Cheeky Devlin]

Helped by most of the away missions taking place on weird coloured sound stages.

Nearly 30 years apart, but look almost identical.

One of the best parts of TOS is Shatner completely hamming it up from time to time.

"The Enemy Within" - Transporter malfunctions and creates a duplicate of Kirk, with all his violent impulses and drives. Amazing scenes of "I'M CAPTAIN KIRK!!!" from the duplicate who can be told apart because he has very slight black eyeliner. Love it.

If you love the Shatner hamming it up, watch Boston Legal. The character he is playing is basically playing the worst excesses of William Shatner.

He's one of the best things about that show.

He was great in that show. Loved the Trek references from time to time.

EDIT: This is from the one I just watched.

[Squinty]

That episode spawned one of my favourite GIFs.

[Cheeky Devlin]

[Victor Mildew]

One day if I find them, I'll put up the photos of when I went to the star trek exhibition with my dad. I'm about 17 with an oasis t-shirt (no fish), spotty as strawberry float and sporting 90s curtain hair There's a picture of me at Picard's desk from his ready room, and I'm crouching at it thinking the photo is being framed to look like I'm sat at it, but it's really far back so I'm just awkwardly hover handing this table.

[Squinty]

Ah, another one who had that awful 90's curtain haircut. I feel your pain.

[Jenuall]

To be fair to that TNG:TOS sound stage comparison above the time difference is more like 20 years than 30!

[Corazon de Leon]

Yeah I think it's 1966 to 1987 isn't it? Something like that?

[Jenuall]

Yeah TOS ran from 1966 until 1969, not sure which episode that shot is from but it will be 66 at the earliest. The TNG shot from Skin of Evil is from 1988 so the biggest age gap is 22 years.

Crazy to think that we are now over 30 years on from the start of TNG!

[Lagamorph]

I still can't believe they originally wanted Patrick Stewart to wear a wig for the role.

[Jenuall]

That's crazy, even in the 24th century mankind hasn't managed to come up with a toupee that doesn't get big laughs

[SEP]

One day if I find them, I'll put up the photos of when I went to the star trek exhibition with my dad. I'm about 17 with an oasis t-shirt (no fish), spotty as strawberry float and sporting 90s curtain hair There's a picture of me at Picard's desk from his ready room, and I'm crouching at it thinking the photo is being framed to look like I'm sat at it, but it's really far back so I'm just awkwardly hover handing this table.

You do look a lot more like Picard now though.

[Lagamorph]

That's crazy, even in the 24th century mankind hasn't managed to come up with a toupee that doesn't get big laughs

[Jenuall]

Should have gone with this one:

[Victor Mildew]

Wait what's the Borg type thing in the side of his face?

[Cheeky Devlin]

TOS - Episode 7: "Mudds Women"

I'd skip this one Taf.

Harry Mudd comes aboard with "three lovely ladies" and causes trouble.

[Jenuall]

Binged on a bunch more TNG over the last couple of nights, season 5 is proving to be a bit more of a mixed bag than I remember.

Unification Part I & Part II - Fan service done well as we get to see how Spock fits into the TNG world. Lots of fun here including Picard and Data doing Romulan cosplay, a fantastic final meeting between Picard and his mind meld buddy Sarek, Picard and Spock sparring with one another over cowboy diplomacy, and it's all tied into the almost contemporary movie The Undiscovered Country for a bit of good old fashioned franchise cross promotion! I'd probably say that I found part I the superior and in all honesty could have done without another appearance from Tasha Yar Commander Sela, but it was all good fun.

A Matter of Time - Nothing special but far from the worst that TNG can sometimes pump out. This is one of those episodes where it's just a bit too annoying that the characters don't question things enough in the way that the audience do so we all end up well aware that Rasmussen is dodgy almost instantly whilst the crew seem to blindly trust him for most of the episode with very little reason to. We've had a few time travel scenarios in the Trek universe by this point but it still seems bizarre that the crew seem to show so little interest in investigating the validity of Rasmussen's claims or inspecting the time travel ship that they have brought on board, and then they just let it fly back off to the 22nd century meaning there is a lost time machine out there somewhere! If time travel is real why don't we see more of these machines? They obviously don't take many precautions when travelling about if a moron like Rasmussen can steal one that goes back to the past! Rasmussen does get bonus points for spending significant effort during his time on the enterprise trying to get Dr Crusher to sleep with him, I'd do the same frankly.

New Ground - Another decent enough but fairly filler episode. Worf has a crash course in parenting and struggles to get his head around the basic concept that "kids tell lies"

Hero Worship - More "meh" territory. Data rescues a kid from a ship that is about to fall apart. Traumatised by the events the kid decides to pretend to be an android like Data rather than deal with things. Child actor exposes Brent Spiner's acting as basically just consisting of tilting his head to the side every now and then. When the Enterprise is hit by the same shock wave that destroyed the first ship Data eventually saves the day by taking strawberry floating ages to work out the obvious answer. Cured of his android delusion the kid returns to normal but is clearly still affected by the events and so struggling he turns to his only source of strength and support in Data who says he would be honoured to remain friends with the boy and meet up with him... we never see him again

Violations - Troi gets mind raped by creepy telepathic aliens. Not much else to say on this one, it was another okay episode. We get to see Picard in a toupee which is fun.

The Masterpiece Society - TNG Presents: Eugenics Is Bad™. I must admit coming off the back of the last few middling episodes I had kind of zoned out by this point. This is another instance where nobody seems to give a gooseberry fool about the Prime Directive, you'd think it would be a pretty ingrained thing in the crew of a starfleet ship like the Enterprise by this point but they just can't help but meddle with gooseberry fool and get their lives tied up in things! The core analogy of "my visor which only exists because of my birth defect is what saved your supposedly perfect society!" is a bit on the nose but I'll let it slide because the colony scientist is strawberry floating annoying and had it coming.

Conundrum - Finally, after a run of very average episodes we get one that is at least interesting! It's not amazing but the central premise of an alien race wiping the crews memories to control them into defeating their enemies is fun to watch play out. Worf staking his claim for the captaincy based on the fact he wears a "Miss Universe" style sash is some great logic. Mind wiped Picard clearly knows that this isn't right but plays along because he's a good guy. All of the interactions between the mind wiped crew are fun to watch, they do a good job of exploring the relationships, similarities and differences between the characters using this device. If you evaluate the plot more it doesn't really make sense - a race that has the ability to wipe the memories of an entire ship feels like they could probably solve their own problems rather than need to get a third party involved in their war, but there you go. Strong suspicion that the whole event was somehow staged by Riker to give him an excuse to bang Ensign Ro.

Power Play - Another good episode, although the "crew members get taken over by malevolent entity" trope already feels old by this point! Always good for O'Brien to get more screen time, even if it is evil O'Brien. This episode is another one that only half resolves as well. I know watching a starfleet cleanup operation is probably not an entertaining show but so many of the Enterprise's adventure basically end with them leaving some part of space still infested with one form of evil or another and we rarely hear them put any kind of long term plan in place to stop it happening again!

Ethics - 3 good episodes in a row! Worf injures himself when a clearly empty barrel falls on his back and he ends up with the possibility of facing a life as a paraplegic. Some good discussions here around cultural differences, with the exchange between Riker and Worf where the former refuses to assist with Worf's ritual suicide attempt. The medical ethics side of thing exploring dangers of blindly chasing medical advancement at any cost are also well done. Only downside is that they hit the reset button following the episode and as far as we can tell Worf is just fine again after this.

The Outcast - The good run comes to an end with this clumsy attempt at addressing gender identity issues within the trek world. I guess it is hard to evaluate this in terms of how it might have felt at the time, but even for the early 90s it feels like this fails to hit the mark in exploring this important area.

Cause and Effect - Excellent, probably the best episode since the Unification two parter. A concept that could have become dull very quickly if executed poorly manages to maintain the tension thanks to effective writing and direction (with Riker himself being the man calling the shots here!) One of the best opening sequences with the destruction of the ship as well - of course we know it will all work out but even so it's very well done!


Not many more episodes to go in season 5 now, I remember it ending well though. I recall 6 being quite a mixed bag as well, there were definitely a few real stinkers in there!