majestic

When I first watched Encounter at Farpoint I hated Q as a character and the entire species as a concept. I still don't care much for the concept of a race of actual gods because that's much more at home in other sci fi (the Ancients and later Ori in Stargate were fine, albeit subject to some ludicrous changes throughout the show and the target of some really bad writing) but I started to enjoy the character of Q and even the other Qs that show up later and finally made my "peace" with Encounter at Farpoint once I watched the commentary on the DVD sets about how Roddenberry was forced to pad it out to a feature length pilot with the material done for a single episode. Except Amanda. Ugh. No puppies, you can't be here. At least the episode was a fun commentary on how characters like Q can ruin a show by being able to handwave everything - at least I'd like to think that was the point. For someone who Twatters a lot about how annoying people are at the theatre and how he can't enjoy the artists vision when someone munches popcorn next to him or talks he sure has no regard for his fellow Trek alumni. Sure DS9 - like any Trek show - can use some trimming on repeated but certainly not on a first time viewing. Applied to TNG that would drop a lot of episodes where he shows up. And by a lot I mean every single one, really, except for The First Duty. Looks more and more like Mr. Wheaton really is the obnoxious douche he initially played on The Big Bang Theory, but who knows, that would be giving Chuck Lorre credit where it most definitely isn't due.

Early '98. So yeah, very much two decades ago.

For all its storytelling faults and that terrible ending, Mass Effect 3 sure had an excellent soundtrack.

Yeah, you're right. I didn't read Story Teller as much as the German translation called Erzähl mir was. I just figured it would be easier to refer to the original, the other stuff was from the How and Why Wonder Books series (Was ist Was by Tessloff, and Hurlshot probably knows or at least knows of the book series). My bad. Whil Wheaton also loves Star Trek Picard. That makes him whatever the opposite of an authority on Star Trek could be called. A Star Trek Trump, perhaps. Not that I disagree that Galaxy Quest was a great film.

Has Jim Humble said anything about using bleach yet? I hear he's quite the authority on the subject. Heh.

Wait until you get to the end...

Galactic treaty!

I liked the Silmarillion much more than Lord of the Rings (which I also enjoyed). As long as you know what you're getting they're pretty good. As Gromnir likes to point out, it's Tolkien's idea of what he wanted British mythology to be and therefore differs from usual (fantasy) novels. Like apparently everyone else here I used to read a lot as a kid. I was particularily fond of Story Teller magazine because it helped me to learn to read early. Story Teller and playing on a bootlegged Atari 2600 knockoff ar some of my earliest childhood memories. Everything else that I read was very much non-fiction. I had books about a wide variety of subjects, from space to biology to the at the time inescapable dinosaur craze and of course my favorite, a book called "How does that work?" - a couple hundred wonderful pages detailing how various day to day technology works, from ballpoint pens to locks that I must have read tens of times. When I was nine I didn't read War and Peace like LC, I read the MS DOS 5.0 manual. That was a long and dry read too. Heh. Probably not much easier to make sense of at that age either. Yeah, I was that weird kid at school that even the other weird kids made fun of. *shrug* Still read a lot. Lots of tech stuff too, mostly for work.

Strongly dislike is too much, but it's not something I would listen to. Like Lunascape:

SWATs are too busy raiding streamers these days. Ain't nobody got time for that.

Patience, Mr. Plinkett is an old codger, not to mention highly at risk right now.

I didn't hate the first episode (just the entire premise, but that's something else entirely) and it was all downhill from there, the lowest point being the ending, the second episode and that Borg Queen rescue teleporter. Nothing else in the show to clearly said "Look we don't know anything about Star Trek and we don't care" than that. Voyager's Borg transwarp conduit system was borderline insane, but at least they had the good grace to show that the Borg were plagued by internal and external issues that were hard to recover from. Guard Dog just likes to see himself on the screen.

Fixed that for you. De gustibus et coloribus non est disputandum. But it's really hard not to reply. On the other hand it would just be a rehash of everything posted before. If I had to choose between watching Picard again or driving a rusty nail up my scrotum I'd very much pick up a hammer. Without a second thought.

Indeed, that just further reinforces my point. With the exception of Mission Impossible (and even then you can make a point for the dreadful second and third film) these were mostly disappointing. I loved Master of the Universe, which was very much so bad it's good. I watch it at least once a year. If for nothing else then for Tom Paris opening a transwarp conduit with a keyboard. In the same category was Batman: The Movie, which has its own charm, much like the series. Who else but Adam West's Batman would haveShark repellent spray available on a helicopter? Also, ugh, thanks for reminding me of the attempts to revive the Addams Family. I hated them all. The original series is glorious, everything else nothing but a failure. Ugh.

Without that scene we would have never gotten this: Everything else is interpreting way too much into Lucas' intentions. He just wanted a flashy fight scene.

Nah, I was trying to make a joke on the C# null-coalescing operator, happily ignoring that .NET doesn't necessarily mean C#.

??

I had a good laugh when Khan said who he was. It's so obvious that the secene is just there because the audience is familiar with him. Space Seed hasn't happened in the Kelvin timeline so it... it really means nothing to the entire cast of the film. "My name is KHAN!" "Okay, 'sup homie? I'm like Kirk the Hothead and this is Spock who is totally without emotions except when the script says he's emotional. We're cartoon copies of better written characters from the past. A bit like you. No, exactly like you. Heh. Brewskie?" Also Starfleet must really suck if they need theh help of someone whose knowledge is three hundred years out of date to help them design weapons (and even then Khan was a leader, not a scientist or engineer). Whose brilliant idea was that again? Bah. This movie is dumber than the Transformers films, and it's Star Trek. Supposedly. Sigh.

Party's over guys, the clown has arrived. Hehe.

TMP is a 45 minutes Star Trek episode stretched to feature film length, with a hefty dose of "look, we now have the budget for proper special effects!" mixed in, but Star Trek was far from the only TV show to have failed in the attempt - although one of the few to get a second (and third, and fourth, and, and, and...) chance to do it right. They sometimes did, but even then had more misses than hits. The one attempt I thought most disappointing was X-File's Fight The Future. TMP was at least good Trek, Fight The Future was a mediocre X-Files myth arc episode. I'm not sure Stargate SG-1's Ark of Truth and Continuum count, being direct to video offerings, but they were middling at best as well. So what else do we have then? Oh, that wonderful A-Team movie. Now that was...

I think I'm the only person to like the Enterprise theme song. The one from the first two seasons, not the changed one from the later two. On the other hand I also like Meat Loaf, so maybe there is something wrong with my (music) taste.

I could watch James Spader play Raymond Reddington all day long and not get bored. As an avid X-Phile I'm also constantly impressed by how coherent the plotting appears to be. I'm sure it isn't, but for something that's running that long and deals with layers upon layers of conspiracies not falling prey to the Chris Carter Effect (tm) or featuring a completely tangled mess of a kudzu plot is pretty impressive.

The Last Jedi suffered from being a bad film, in addition to being a comedy with sci-fi elements instead of a fun sci-fi romp with some comedic elements. Trying something new doesn't truly rank among its faults so much, at least for me. Subverting expectations can also be good, just not in a middle film of a trilogy. Jar Jar Abram's plot threads from The Force Awakens were all pretty much standard Star Wars and/or fantasy fare so a little subversion might have been a good idea, but taking a complete dump on its legacy didn't work out. For all its issues I still liked how Kylo chose the Dark Side and tempted Rey the moment he had any agency. I dislike Snoke being disregarded because I am, for all my other faults, a man of simple pleasures. I like me a mystery or two and quite frankly, and Snoke ultimately being of no consequence was... disappointing. Him being a manufactured front for Palpatine even more so, but that's something else entirely. The whole situation could have been salvaged by Kylo Ren assuming the mantle of the unredeemable antagonist that Star Wars generally works with, but Disney lacked the commitment to follow through and wanted him redeemed, so there we are. Empire is quite clearly the best of the movies, I'd rank Return as equal to the original film right after that though. I've said that before in several other threads, being a complete space battle nerd it's impossible for me to not enjoy Return of the Jedi, warts (well Ewoks) and all, but I can - objectively - understand why people would rank it as the least of the original trilogy. I don't think it deserves to be put beneath Revenge of the Sith or Rogue One. That said, it's not unreasonable to want a fun space romp to be a competently made film, and entries seven through nine of a universe to stick to its own rules would be really nice, and I'm not even going to begin to talk about how the choices for the later films make the earlier ones seem silly or pointless. What exactly was the point of Anaking choosing his son over the Emperor? Palpatine's alive, Luke isn't. GG Disney, GG. There's still time to turn back. Don't... just don't. Spare yourself the pain of watching Klingorks lay siege to the United Federation of Gondor. Or an angel from the future appearing to help humanity escape Skynet's apocalypse. The Undiscovered Country is great because it is also a showcase on how to deal with current political situations within the Star Trek universe. Unlike one of these recent shows, what was that? Star Trek Picerd or something. Heh.

But not all gay people actually practice anal intercourse. And what about heterosexual guys who enjoy a good pegging or two by their spouse? Especially true for the US.