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The TV and Streaming Thread: Series 5


Amentep

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13 minutes ago, majestic said:

Zinda, his face black, his eyes red. Kadir beneath Mo Moteh.

 

You know a real Trekkie whrn they speak Tamarian. Darmok and Jalad on the ocean.

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"Any organization created out of fear must create fear to survive." - Bill Hicks

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Eh, I remember Code of Honor being a bit dull and silly, but there were worse episodes I thought.

I'm only early in Season 6, so I have no clue how good/bad it'll become.

Season 5 had some great episodes, of that I cannot disagree.  But it was a high-high/low-lows thing for me, where as Season 1 has a lot of middle-of-the-road episodes to me.

I cannot - yet I must. How do you calculate that? At what point on the graph do "must" and "cannot" meet? Yet I must - but I cannot! ~ Ro-Man

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5 minutes ago, Keyrock said:

You know a real Trekkie whrn they speak Tamarian. Darmok and Jalad on the ocean.

Sokath, his eyes uncovered.

Well, it's the most fitting reply, sort of. Plus it's been a while. Not sure if I should be frightend that I remember that much or proud of my nerdiness. ;) 

Great, now I want to watch Darmok.

edit:

Klingon is for amateurs. :p

  

1 minute ago, Amentep said:

Season 5 had some great episodes, of that I cannot disagree.  But it was a high-high/low-lows thing for me, where as Season 1 has a lot of middle-of-the-road episodes to me.


Yeah, well, dunno. I'd put most of season one at D- or worse. Anything that has early Wesley in it for longer than 2 minutes also auto-defaults to F. Except Where No Man Has Gone Before. :)

Edited by majestic

No mind to think. No will to break. No voice to cry suffering.

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12 minutes ago, Keyrock said:

You know a real Trekkie whrn they speak Tamarian. Darmok and Jalad on the ocean.

Nerds.

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Why has elegance found so little following? Elegance has the disadvantage that hard work is needed to achieve it and a good education to appreciate it. - Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

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It's been a while since I've watched TNG, so I'm going off somewhat fuzzy memory, but I'd rate the seasons as such:

Season 1) D+ Consistently subpar with a few decent episodes.

Season 2) C- All over the place with some legitimately good epidodes and some downright trash.

Season 3) A+ The Golden Age begins. 

Season 4) A The Golden Age continues.

Season 5) C+ Very uneven.

Season 6) B Uneven but with some really great episodes.

Seadon 7) C They're mailing it in at this point.

Edited by Keyrock

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"Any organization created out of fear must create fear to survive." - Bill Hicks

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55 minutes ago, majestic said:

Zinda, his face black, his eyes red. Kadir beneath Mo Moteh.

 

Chibi-Usa and Pegasus in the sky.

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"Akiva Goldsman and Alex Kurtzman run the 21st century version of MK ULTRA." - majestic

"you're a damned filthy lying robot and you deserve to die and burn in hell." - Bartimaeus

"Without individual thinking you can't notice the plot holes." - InsaneCommander

"Just feed off the suffering of gamers." - Malcador

"You are calling my taste crap." -Hurlshort

"thankfully it seems like the creators like Hungary less this time around." - Sarex

"Don't forget the wakame, dumbass" -Keyrock

"Are you trolling or just being inadvertently nonsensical?' -Pidesco

"we have already been forced to admit you are at least human" - uuuhhii

"I refuse to buy from non-woke businesses" - HoonDing

"feral camels are now considered a pest" - Gorth

"Melkathi is known to be an overly critical grumpy person" - Melkathi

"Oddly enough Sanderson was a lot more direct despite being a Mormon" - Zoraptor

"I found it greatly disturbing to scroll through my cartoon's halfing selection of genitalias." - Wormerine

"I love cheese despite the pain and carnage." - ShadySands

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8 minutes ago, ShadySands said:

Kiteo, his eyes closed

Spoilered, because horror:

Spoiler

tenor.gif

Ah, screw it. You will suffer. You will ALL suffer:

original.jpg

And yes, that's some hot girl on horse action. And she's like nine. So that's perfectly fine, nothing to see here. Nothing!

Edited by majestic
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No mind to think. No will to break. No voice to cry suffering.

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6 hours ago, majestic said:

Even then, they had a decent setup and potential (and in the case of Voyager, it stayed mostly unrealized). Discovery and Picard are utterly devoid of that. There is nothing, absolutely nothing you can do with these.

They could have done something worthwhile with both Discovery and Picard, even just making the plot coherent would have done a lot. 90% of the problems aren't with what happens, per se, they're with how it happens and the philosophy of design by bullet point where they know what they want to happen and who their characters are in a vague way describable in a short sentence, but have no way to link them together or have them interact that makes any sense. ie the focus is on making things 'cool' and relevant, or at least what the writers think is cool and relevant. The trouble is of course that you can't make them better without removing the showrunners and writers that think their disorganised fanfic level dreck is modern Shakespeare.

The 'reapers' from Picard for example weren't inherently more stupid than the Prophets from DS9, and while the Bajoran religious stuff was the part of DS9 that always had me personally rolling my eyes plenty of people seem to like it, because it was handled so much better.

10 hours ago, Amentep said:

Unfortunately most modern storytellers can't get past the present day to project themselves into a theoretically better tomorrow, IMO.

It seems that most modern writers fundamentally don't want to get past the present day.

I think the case in point comes most from a 'behind the scenes' Watchmen (TV) vignette where one of the writers/ producers listed all the differences between its world and the modern world, which are... pretty significant. He then says a little later that they absolutely deliberately wrote their alt history program with 'superheroes' so that every problem that exists in this world also "had to exist" (direct quote) in the one where a giant squid splattered NYC, a psychopathic blue nudist disintegrated the viet minh then lived on Mars, and the internet doesn't exist.

The odd thing is that it isn't like Star Trek- or Doctor Who as another example- didn't deal with real world/ 'progressive' issues before, and that they did is one reason why the series were loved. The modern approach seems to be to hit the audience repeatedly in the face with very badly abstracted modern issues as a raison d'être for the whole thing. It would be a lot more effective if the moral message was wrapped in something, well, good on its own merits.

(Case in point for that from TNG's decline: Force of Nature. Warp destroying the galaxy's fabric as analogy to climate change etc, but the episode is so bad that you end up rolling your eyes at the whole thing, and any moral message from the analogy is lost)

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1 minute ago, majestic said:

You're one evil meanie zucchini, really.

Yes.

Regardless, season 1 of TNG was awful and I can't recommend it to anyone. Likewise starting at season 3 doesn't seem like good advice. So I land in the conundrum of either not recommending a show I like or getting someone to watch 24 hours of awful TV.

"Akiva Goldsman and Alex Kurtzman run the 21st century version of MK ULTRA." - majestic

"you're a damned filthy lying robot and you deserve to die and burn in hell." - Bartimaeus

"Without individual thinking you can't notice the plot holes." - InsaneCommander

"Just feed off the suffering of gamers." - Malcador

"You are calling my taste crap." -Hurlshort

"thankfully it seems like the creators like Hungary less this time around." - Sarex

"Don't forget the wakame, dumbass" -Keyrock

"Are you trolling or just being inadvertently nonsensical?' -Pidesco

"we have already been forced to admit you are at least human" - uuuhhii

"I refuse to buy from non-woke businesses" - HoonDing

"feral camels are now considered a pest" - Gorth

"Melkathi is known to be an overly critical grumpy person" - Melkathi

"Oddly enough Sanderson was a lot more direct despite being a Mormon" - Zoraptor

"I found it greatly disturbing to scroll through my cartoon's halfing selection of genitalias." - Wormerine

"I love cheese despite the pain and carnage." - ShadySands

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7 minutes ago, Zoraptor said:

The 'reapers' from Picard for example weren't inherently more stupid than the Prophets from DS9, and while the Bajoran religious stuff was the part of DS9 that always had me personally rolling my eyes plenty of people seem to like it, because it was handled so much better.

I don't like the Prophets either, and for the record, while I like Q the character, the Q as a race are such an infathomably stupid idea that I'm surprised the writers came up with as many decent episodes involving them as they did. Even the Voyager Q episodes were some of the better ones.

7 minutes ago, Zoraptor said:

They could have done something worthwhile with both Discovery and Picard,

With Discovery maybe, Picard? No. That entire series hinges on the idea that the Federation turned into Trump-America within 25 years, based on a crisis that isn't even in the ballpark of possible.

  

1 minute ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

Yes.

Regardless, season 1 of TNG was awful and I can't recommend it to anyone. Likewise starting at season 3 doesn't seem like good advice. So I land in the conundrum of either not recommending a show I like or getting someone to watch 24 hours of awful TV.

I wouldn't ever do it, but you could kind of watch a few select season one and two episodes, and then go for three. You can potentially skip the first season completely, but you'd miss out on Measure of a Man without forming some attachment to Data prior to that, and the preceeding season two episodes won't cut it completely, I think.

Yes, it really is a conundrum.

Edited by majestic
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1 minute ago, majestic said:

I don't like the Prophets either, and for the record, while I like Q the character, the Q as a race are such an infathomably stupid idea that I'm surprised the writers came up with as many decent episodes involving them as they did. Even the Voyager Q episodes were some of the better ones.

I agree that the Q as a concept are a terrible idea, but it mostly works because John de Lancie is delightful.

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🇺🇸RFK Jr 2024🇺🇸

"Any organization created out of fear must create fear to survive." - Bill Hicks

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42 minutes ago, majestic said:

Spoilered, because horror:

  Reveal hidden contents

tenor.gif

Ah, screw it. You will suffer. You will ALL suffer:

original.jpg

And yes, that's some hot girl on horse action. And she's like nine. So that's perfectly fine, nothing to see here. Nothing!

Let's not go to "Fish Eye. Score Goal".

sign.jpg

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John de Lancie as Q is a great example of an actor spinning gold out of what should be a stupid idea. Same for Ian McDiarmid in the SW prequels playing Palpatine perfectly pantomime.

21 minutes ago, majestic said:

With Discovery maybe, Picard? No. That entire series hinges on the idea that the Federation turned into Trump-America within 25 years, based on a crisis that isn't even in the ballpark of possible.

You could get more or less the same stuff happening without the modern day shoehorning though, and it would likely be better with a more well thought out, organic and internally consistent explanation.

I have to admit that I've blotted out most of Picard especially the final episodes (and despite not hating the lead episodes), but things like the hermit refugee Romulans turning up at a random planet with more ships than they ever seemed to have in any other ST would work a lot better if they weren't impoverished refugee hermits.

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13 minutes ago, InsaneCommander said:

Let's not go to "Fish Eye. Score Goal".

Amazon Trio, at Crystal Lake.

Or let's make that even worse, perhaps:

Makoto, her dress frilly. ;(

edit:

I think I just ruined Darmok forever with that, and @KP the meanie zucchini is to blame for coming up with the idea.

Edited by majestic
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John de Lancie as Q worked best when they had a script based around Q engaging with Picard.

When they had an episode that was "hey, let's do something silly and weird. We'll use Q as the excuse for it to happen", then you tended to have the misfires.

"Cuius testiculos habeas, habeas cardia et cerebellum."

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4 minutes ago, majestic said:

Amazon Trio, at Crystal Lake.

Or let's make that even worse, perhaps:

Makoto, her dress frilly. ;(

edit:

I think I just ruined Darmok forever with that, and @KP the meanie zucchini is to blame for coming up with the idea.

I just took the idea of speaking in allegory with myth and applied it to real life, where we would be referencing various entertainment. Kars in the valley.

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"Akiva Goldsman and Alex Kurtzman run the 21st century version of MK ULTRA." - majestic

"you're a damned filthy lying robot and you deserve to die and burn in hell." - Bartimaeus

"Without individual thinking you can't notice the plot holes." - InsaneCommander

"Just feed off the suffering of gamers." - Malcador

"You are calling my taste crap." -Hurlshort

"thankfully it seems like the creators like Hungary less this time around." - Sarex

"Don't forget the wakame, dumbass" -Keyrock

"Are you trolling or just being inadvertently nonsensical?' -Pidesco

"we have already been forced to admit you are at least human" - uuuhhii

"I refuse to buy from non-woke businesses" - HoonDing

"feral camels are now considered a pest" - Gorth

"Melkathi is known to be an overly critical grumpy person" - Melkathi

"Oddly enough Sanderson was a lot more direct despite being a Mormon" - Zoraptor

"I found it greatly disturbing to scroll through my cartoon's halfing selection of genitalias." - Wormerine

"I love cheese despite the pain and carnage." - ShadySands

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7 minutes ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

I just took the idea of speaking in allegory with myth and applied it to real life, where we would be referencing various entertainment. Kars in the valley.

Try as a might, I can't come up with a decent reply to that. :p

DIO, his eyes stingy. :shrugz:

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1 hour ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

Yes.

Regardless, season 1 of TNG was awful and I can't recommend it to anyone. Likewise starting at season 3 doesn't seem like good advice. So I land in the conundrum of either not recommending a show I like or getting someone to watch 24 hours of awful TV.

Maybe pick a few key okay or better episodes from 1 & 2 to bridge to 3?

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I cannot - yet I must. How do you calculate that? At what point on the graph do "must" and "cannot" meet? Yet I must - but I cannot! ~ Ro-Man

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star trek, unlike star wars, tried to have a science-based explanation for the seeming implausible. q was a useful tool for ignoring such. if you had a good story idea which just didn't make sense from a science pov, then make it a q episode fixed the problem. even better, you got an all-powerful walking and talking deus ex option who is not some kinda remote and ineffable being but rather one o' the more annoyingly human characters in the star trek universe. 

ironic, the reason the character were drek from a star trek pov is exact what made him useful/necessary. q were a clever way for adding magic into the star trek universe, 'cause he were an extreme example o' arthur c. clarke's third law. can't emasculate q with science 'cause explanation is he is just too advanced to be explained. 

regardless, am having no idea o' the current state o' trek. as noted, haven't watched discovery or picard. that said, the last thing we would want were a return to roddenberry's utopian vision (presumptive sans the misogamy) with the federation existing as some kinda big happy family o' well-intentioned space explorers sans any o' the predictable interpersonal problems o' a real family. can't even imagine writing such and is a real testament to the trek writers how after some growing pains in season one they managed to put together so many excellent episodes.

HA! Good Fun!

ps have mentioned previous how netflix were a godsend for our trek viewing. each trek series had multiple amazing episodes, often with large gaps 'tween great episodes. no dozens of discs with a streaming service. and if somebody reminds us o' an episode we maybe shoulda' appreciated but didn't, is easy to use streaming menus to convenient watch a episode.

am not having the patience o' amenetep to rewatch all o' tng, but thanks to streaming, is ez to avoid such a slog.

trek, for us, exists ala carte. thank goodness.

Edited by Gromnir
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"If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence."Justice Louis Brandeis, Concurring, Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357 (1927)

"Im indifferent to almost any murder as long as it doesn't affect me or mine."--Gfted1 (September 30, 2019)

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29 minutes ago, majestic said:

Try as a might, I can't come up with a decent reply to that. :p

DIO, his eyes stingy. :shrugz:

I mean when you think about it, most people would be more familiar with TV and movies than mythology so referencing that would be more common than recounting which time Zeus cheated on his wife. A weird thing about Star Trek is how people generally experience classical entertainment (Shakespeare plays, classical music) while modern(ish) and futuristic stuff (from our perspective) doesn't really happen. Off the top of my head, there's Riker's jazz, Tom Paris' 50's fixation, and O'Brian singing Louie Louie. I guess people won't remember the 20th and 21st centuries very well.

Irenicus, his celibacy involuntary. 

22 minutes ago, Amentep said:

Maybe pick a few key okay or better episodes from 1 & 2 to bridge to 3?

But then I'd have to watch 1 and 2.

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"Akiva Goldsman and Alex Kurtzman run the 21st century version of MK ULTRA." - majestic

"you're a damned filthy lying robot and you deserve to die and burn in hell." - Bartimaeus

"Without individual thinking you can't notice the plot holes." - InsaneCommander

"Just feed off the suffering of gamers." - Malcador

"You are calling my taste crap." -Hurlshort

"thankfully it seems like the creators like Hungary less this time around." - Sarex

"Don't forget the wakame, dumbass" -Keyrock

"Are you trolling or just being inadvertently nonsensical?' -Pidesco

"we have already been forced to admit you are at least human" - uuuhhii

"I refuse to buy from non-woke businesses" - HoonDing

"feral camels are now considered a pest" - Gorth

"Melkathi is known to be an overly critical grumpy person" - Melkathi

"Oddly enough Sanderson was a lot more direct despite being a Mormon" - Zoraptor

"I found it greatly disturbing to scroll through my cartoon's halfing selection of genitalias." - Wormerine

"I love cheese despite the pain and carnage." - ShadySands

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