The Star Trek Thread

[Peter Crisp]

Discovery is TV Star Trek at its overall worst. Never ever ever start with Discovery as your introduction to Star Trek.

There are individual episodes from every other series that are absolutely worse (Code of Honor from TNG, These are the Voyages from Enterprise, Threshold from Voyager, to name but a few), but as a series Discovery is bottom of the pile.

Discovery is an ok Sci-Fi show but it really isn't a Star Trek show.
The whole tone of the show just doesn't fit as it's just go way too much action and the tone is just overly dark and depressing.

Sure DS9 had major action sequences and episodes but had mostly story episodes with large chunks where action was in the background and character development was at the fore. Discovery seems to come from the "More explosions is always better" school of TV and it could just do with calming down as not everything needs to happen at warp speed all the time.

Some of the best Trek episodes of all time are slow and with almost no action at all which is personified by one of the franchises most beloved episodes with The Inner Light.
The Discovery Short Treks are for me some of the best moments in that series as they're not all action and are all the better for it.

[Cuttooth]

Finally started watching DS9 properly (rather than whatever was on bbc2 when I was a kid) following the guide on letswatchstartrek.com, there are barely a handful of good episodes in season 1 , at least I'll get to the Dominion wars quicker

That list suggests Shadowplay from S2 is skippable. I'd suggest it's one of the best earlier episodes.

[Hexx]

Discovery is TV Star Trek at its overall worst. Never ever ever start with Discovery as your introduction to Star Trek.

There are individual episodes from every other series that are absolutely worse (Code of Honor from TNG, These are the Voyages from Enterprise, Threshold from Voyager, to name but a few), but as a series Discovery is bottom of the pile.

Discovery is an ok Sci-Fi show but it really isn't a Star Trek show.
The whole tone of the show just doesn't fit as it's just go way too much action and the tone is just overly dark and depressing.

Sure DS9 had major action sequences and episodes but had mostly story episodes with large chunks where action was in the background and character development was at the fore. Discovery seems to come from the "More explosions is always better" school of TV and it could just do with calming down as not everything needs to happen at warp speed all the time.

Some of the best Trek episodes of all time are slow and with almost no action at all which is personified by one of the franchises most beloved episodes with The Inner Light.
The Discovery Short Treks are for me some of the best moments in that series as they're not all action and are all the better for it.

I think one of my favorite "terrible things" about discovery is the camera operators are all obviously off their heads on meth

This is the only example I can find on youtube and it doesn't even include the prolific spining/going upside down they're so fond off

[Jenuall]

Uh, that's just nauseating to watch.

On to the back half of TNG S2 now, last nights episode featured Riker beating up his dad and Worf engaging in some Klingon BDSM ceremony whilst Geordi and the gang all stood and watched.

[Lagamorph]

Can you imagine if during Picard's speech in Drumhead (another great TNG episode and another example of how zero-action Star Trek can be incredible) the camera had just been spinning around and around him?

[Peter Crisp]

I think the stupid camera stuff is just so they can show the sets.
Yes, the sets are indeed amazing but just stop with the spiny shite and pick a basic camera angle and go with it. They can show the sets in the title sequence if they're really getting a boner about them and they can also turn off the strawberry floating lens flare while their at it as I know it's supposed to be arty and stuff but it's distracting and rubbish.

[Squinty]

It's modern film making. Cuts are sometimes way too fast, camera angles feel unnatural. Discovery suffers from this.

I forgot how crazy the BSG reimagining was for camera work. Very little tripod use, and it shows.

[Jenuall]

Just watched Q Who, still such a great episode.

Must have felt so amazing to witness the first contact with The Borg when this aired back in '89!

[Peter Crisp]

Yep, that was back when the Borg were the mysterious super bad guys who just obliterated everything.
They should have stayed an enemy they only bring out a few times per generation series run (I'm struggling to think of a better way to say TNG, or DS9 ect) as then they keep the mystery and sense of ultimate power.
They only appear a few times in TNG and it does keep them as a solid enemy who will scare the Federation shitless and force them to amass vast fleets at the mere mention that a Cube may be on the way.

Now The Borg are just pretty much standard bad guys and they've been ruined.

[Squinty]

They could have done some really interesting stuff with them in Voyager. I mean, Voyager was basically in the belly of the beast.

They failed so hard with it though. I absolutely hate some of the stories they did with it (that set of episodes where they get assimilated on purpose basically trivialises it).

[Peter Crisp]

The Borg go from 1 cube heading towards Earth possibly the beginning of the end of the entire Federation to Voyager just wandering through the middle of Borg space with no help and surviving.
It's the equivalent of a biker gang winning WW3 against the Russians at the height of the cold war.
Yeah they have some sweet motorcycles and groovy leather jackets but that's not going to help much against 50 Hind attack choppers.

If I was The Borg Queen I'd have just kept crashing cubes into Voyager or just ignored them as it was just 1 ship and they have half the galaxy to rule over.

[Corazon de Leon]

The Borg go from 1 cube heading towards Earth possibly the beginning of the end of the entire Federation to Voyager just wandering through the middle of Borg space with no help and surviving.
It's the equivalent of a biker gang winning WW3 against the Russians at the height of the cold war.
Yeah they have some sweet motorcycles and groovy leather jackets but that's not going to help much against 50 Hind attack choppers.

If I was The Borg Queen I'd have just kept crashing cubes into Voyager or just ignored them as it was just 1 ship and they have half the galaxy to rule over.

It’s made very clear that the Borg Queen absolutely ignores Voyager for the vast majority of the show and was quite content to let them dick around the quadrant as long as their actions didn’t directly impact the Borg themselves.

[Jenuall]

The Borg did get overexposed and diminished over time which is a real shame. Also it's strange watching back at their original appearance and remembering that their whole goal and modus operandi basically gets thrown out the window quite quickly. Originally they didn't really give a gooseberry fool about other people and species and were just interesting in the assimilation of new technology.

Watched a few more episodes last night, kind of forgot that whilst season 2 is a considerable improvement it still contains quite a few clunkers! Watched Samaritan Snare featuring one of the stupidest alien species yet, literally! "We look for things", "He make our ship go?" Also this episode really puts Picard through the wringer - not only does he have to endure a fate worse than death - 6 hours in a shuttle with Wesley Crusher ( ) then he actually nearly does die, which would be bad enough but then he has to face the indignity of having his life saved by Dr strawberry floating Polaski! Sorry Jean Luc, you deserve so much better!

Next up you have the episode featuring the interstellar band of Irish stereotypes, it's like someone just beamed Jack from Father Ted into space for half the bloody time! Still Riker gets to shag the hot redhead so it's not all bad as far as the Enterprise crew are concerned. Riker also has to destroy his own clone in this episode which is a strawberry floating good job because I don't think the female population of the universe could cope with two Rikers! (although I seem to recall he does get cloned at some point - is that in DS9?)

[Cuttooth]

Good ol' Thomas Riker.

[Lagamorph]

It's kind of understandable that the Borg end up changing between TNG and Voyager. They continually adapt, which means they're going to continually change.

To be honest my biggest issue with The Borg is that Guinan describes them as having been around for thousands of centuries, whilst in Voyager an alien race comments that 900 years ago the Borg were a trivially annoying nuisance confined to just a few systems.

I'm also one of the few people who thought the Borg episode in Enterprise was great

[Squinty]

Oh god that Space Irish episode. It's so strawberry floating bad.

Riker gets cloned in a transporter accident if I remember correctly.

[Jenuall]

Bloody hell, was there a writers strike or something toward the end of season 2? Some of these later episodes are really pushing it now!

Just watched the "Betazoid Menopause" episode where Troi's mum tries to get it on with Picard ...and Wesley ... and Worf .. and Riker (obvs )

Props to Picard for deploying Data as a cock block through, a very effective technique!

[Squinty]

Bloody hell, was there a writers strike or something toward the end of season 2? Some of these later episodes are really pushing it now!

Just watched the "Betazoid Menopause" episode where Troi's mum tries to get it on with Picard ...and Wesley ... and Worf .. and Riker (obvs )

Props to Picard for deploying Data as a cock block through, a very effective technique!

Surprised Data didn't tap that with his robo dick.

[Jenuall]

Bloody hell, was there a writers strike or something toward the end of season 2? Some of these later episodes are really pushing it now!

Just watched the "Betazoid Menopause" episode where Troi's mum tries to get it on with Picard ...and Wesley ... and Worf .. and Riker (obvs )

Props to Picard for deploying Data as a cock block through, a very effective technique!

Surprised Data didn't tap that with his robo dick.

Well he is "fully functional" and programmed in multiple techniques.

[Lagamorph]

Bloody hell, was there a writers strike or something toward the end of season 2? Some of these later episodes are really pushing it now!

Yes actually, there was. It caused them to shorten the season by several episodes and even end up using an unused Star Trek Phase 2 script for one episode. The strike was in the early episodes, but the season had a budget as a whole rather than per-episode budgets, so by the end of Season 2 they were almost out of money, which is why the last episode of Season 2 is a clip show of flashbacks.