The TV and Streaming Thread: Series 5

[Keyrock]

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.

[Amentep]

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.

[majestic]

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.

  

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 July 26, 2021 by majestic

[Malcador]

12 minutes ago, Keyrock said:

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

Nerds.

[Keyrock]

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 July 26, 2021 by Keyrock

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

55 minutes ago, majestic said:

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

 

Chibi-Usa and Pegasus in the sky.

[majestic]

2 minutes ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

Chibi-Usa and Pegasus in the sky.

You're one evil meanie zucchini, really.

[ShadySands]

2 minutes ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

Chibi-Usa and Pegasus in the sky.

Kiteo, his eyes closed

[majestic]

8 minutes ago, ShadySands said:

Kiteo, his eyes closed

Spoilered, because horror:

Spoiler

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

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 July 26, 2021 by majestic

[Zoraptor]

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)

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

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.

[majestic]

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 July 26, 2021 by majestic

[Keyrock]

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.

[InsaneCommander]

42 minutes ago, majestic said:

Spoilered, because horror:

  Reveal hidden contents

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

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".

[Zoraptor]

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.

[majestic]

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 July 26, 2021 by majestic

[InsaneCommander]

2 minutes ago, majestic said:

Amazon Trio, at Crystal Lake.

Or let's make that even worse, perhaps:

Makoto, her dress frilly.

Viewers, their hands shaking.

[Raithe]

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.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

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.

[majestic]

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.

DIO, his eyes stingy.

[Keyrock]

Lursa and B'Etor at Qo'nos.

[ShadySands]

4 minutes ago, majestic said:

DIO, his eyes stingy.

That's all I got

[Amentep]

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?

[Gromnir]

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 July 26, 2021 by Gromnir

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

29 minutes ago, majestic said:

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

DIO, his eyes stingy.

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.