Star Trek TNG-A Die Hard TOS Fan First View & Perspective

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by Jeffczar, Jul 3, 2015.

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  1. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

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    San Francisco
    Spoilers!

    But yeah, I agree.
     
  2. Jeffczar

    Jeffczar Well-Known Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    OK I skipped ahead to see The Inner Light. Absolutely incredible ! For sure a top 10 episode of any Trek series. Instantly became an all time favorite.
     
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  3. Deesky

    Deesky Forum Resident

    I have mixed feelings about it. On one level it's touching, emotional and well acted, which is what most people respond to, but at the same time, the aliens' legacy is also very cruel and selfish. Basically, because the aliens want to be remembered after their demise, they have set up a probe which hijacks passerby's mental system by implanting lasting memories, essentially making them a lifetime prisoner in a simulated environment (it doesn't matter that it only took moments in ship time, it felt like 40 years to Picard). How dare they attack other races with this selfish technology? Why not just leave a record of their civilization in the probe rather than forcing a lifetime of fake memories into people's brains?
     
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  4. Linger63

    Linger63 Forum Resident

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    Luxwana Troi.............:thumbsdow
     
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  5. Encuentro

    Encuentro Forum Resident

    They may have emotionally traumatized Picard, but at least they gave him a flute. That was nice of them. :)
     
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  6. benjaminhuf

    benjaminhuf Forum Resident

    Jeffczar: Glad you are enjoying the show. I'm 50, and have been a Trek fan off and on since about the age of 8. Back in 1987, I gave up on TNG after a few episodes because it was so flawed. But as you've already discovered, it really does get better. My older sister, also a fan, got me back into it in 1989.

    Please, please watch the remastered episodes. The blu-rays are completely worth it, and have great bonus features, documentaries, bloopers, and commentaries.

    But, if you can't get those, here's a secret: Amazon Prime has the remastered episodes of TNG available for streaming for "free" for Prime members.

    As others have said, once you start this journey, you should try DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise.
     
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  7. jriems

    jriems Audio Ojiisan

    And taught him how to play it well... :thumbsup:
     
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  8. benjaminhuf

    benjaminhuf Forum Resident

    For fun, my teenage son and I voted together a while ago on our top 40 episodes of TNG. Here's what we came up with (although I'm sure if we took the vote a different day we'd get a somewhat different list). He's a computer science major, and so how we did it is we first picked our list of 50 favorites, iirc, and then wrote a program so that we could quickly head to head to rank them, and then it generated this list.

    All Good Things
    Chain of Command
    Darmok
    Measure of a Man
    The Inner Light

    The Offspring
    Unification
    Yesterday's Enterprise
    Best of Both Worlds
    Frame of Mind

    The Defector
    Time's Arrow
    Preemptive Strike
    Face of the Enemy
    Redemption

    Cause and Effect
    Arsenal of Freedom
    Parallels
    Time Squared
    Coming of Age

    Remember Me
    Sins of the Father
    Conspiracy
    Family
    A Matter of Honor

    Reunion
    Timescape
    Disaster
    I, Borg
    Ensign Ro

    Night Terrors
    The Next Phase
    Second Chances
    The Game
    A Fistful of Datas

    The Battle
    Ship in a Bottle
    Conundrum
    Evolution
    Relics
     
  9. BrewDrinkRepeat

    BrewDrinkRepeat Forum Resident

    Location:
    Merchantville NJ
    Told ya. :D
     
  10. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    It's interesting to watch these 25+ years on (hard to believe it's been that long). The series finale really is pretty good, although I don't know if I'd rank it with the 10 best episodes. The sentiment is alright - the execution I had some issues with. It's better than any of the TNG movies though, I think - those were a wasted opportunity.

    "Darmok" and "The Measure Of A Man" would probably be in my top 10 list. I liked "The Inner Light", but not as much as most. The first half of "The Best Of Both Worlds" ranks high (although the production design and direction is sloppy - the "action" scenes in Pt. 1 in particular are creaky, as is the alien ship's interior - Voyager did much better, at least on the production design front), but I thought the second half was something of a letdown. The follow-up "Family" got terrible ratings, but I thought it was really profound.

    "Contagion" and "Peak Performance" from the 2nd season don't get the love they deserve - I thought they were both really well-done. "Conspiracy" is the only 1st season episode that might make my list.

    Apart from "The Measure Of A Man", the other "issues" episode that gets my vote would be "The Drumhead". That one has stuck in my mind. I thought "Chain Of Command" was exceedingly well-done, but the problem with it is I never for a moment bought the premise, which I just found ridiculous.

    They had quite a few catastrophe episodes - especially in the later seasons it seems like - and "Disaster" was probably the best of the bunch. "Cause And Effect" is notable for combining catastrophe with a big mystery.

    Of the Klingon episodes, "Sins Of The Father" and its follow-up "Reunion" were probably the best, the latter thanks to a certain guest star. I think they screwed the pooch here a bit though, and should have made her a series regular instead.

    "Yesterday's Enterprise" would probably get my vote for "best" TNG episode overall. I was completely blown away first time I saw it. Couldn't believe they pulled it off. I think this was the first episode where I felt like the series finally stepped out of its predecessor's shadow. Again though, like "The Measure Of A Man", it relied on Stewart and Goldberg to really pull it to the next level. The same duo elevated the somewhat muddled "Time's Arrow" as well, although it wouldn't make my top 10 list.
     
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  11. Deesky

    Deesky Forum Resident

    Totally agree with that, she would have been a worthy and honorable addition to the crew. However, I would also include Redemption I & II in the list of best Klingon episodes.
     
  12. Encuentro

    Encuentro Forum Resident

    I've never been very good at ranking anything, songs, albums, movies, TV series episodes, but All Good Things stands as my favorite episode and my favorite TNG "movie." It just feels like a movie due to both its length and its feel. That episode just feels kind of epic to me. Travelling back and forth through time, going as far back as the beginning of organic life on Earth and having to make a choice that could mean the beginning or the end of humanity.

    An episode that rarely gets mentioned but that I've always enjoyed is Who Watches the Watchers. I like the concept Picard being seen as a divine being based on the fact that the relatively primitive culture in the episode has no understanding of 24th Century Earth technology. It calls into question what it means to be divine being. If we were to travel back to the 16th Century, bring somebody to the present and show them our technology, there's a pretty good chance that they would see our technology as magic.
     
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  13. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Oooh, I forgot about "Who Watches The Watchers". Yup, easily in my top 10, and it also manages to slyly skewer Picard's ego...

    I thought part one was brilliant. I thought part two was a mess. TNG had issues with most of its two-parters, actually. They could write a great setup, but the resolutions? Meh.
     
  14. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Not only is TNG free to Prime members on Amazon, and not only is it the newly remastered version, but it's in HD. So you can save yourself a fortune buying TNG Blu-rays if you have Prime, and just stream them from Amazon.

    I just watched Redemption Pt. 1 and it looked pretty freakin' spectacular. Almost too good. I think HD makes some of their sets look a bit cheaper, the lighting sometimes seems a bit flat/off, and the shading they used on Worf to make his ridges look deeper than they really were kind of stands out in closeups.

    The effects are surprisingly good, considering they were shot on a TV budget about a quarter century ago.
     
  15. Deesky

    Deesky Forum Resident

    Yes. I think that's also true for DS9 and Voyager, even though they came a little later. It's a great pity that the latter two probably won't get the remastering treatment.
     
  16. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    DS9 had really good effects in comparison to TNG, and the sets were (generally) better too, although I thought they were still a bit clunky. But yeah, doubtful they'll go to the trouble of remastering it for HD - I don't think the audience is there to justify the cost, which is too bad.

    Voyager looks pretty spectacular compared to its predecessors. I thought the sets were top-notch and the effects were frequently stunning (CGI to the rescue!). There's an episode where Voyager herself crashes on an ice planet ("Timeless", 1998), and the crash effect is far more convincing than that shown in the big screen Star Trek: Generations from just 4 years earlier. The Generations sequence looks like something from a crappy old Godzilla flick in comparison...

     
  17. Deesky

    Deesky Forum Resident

    The thing that stood out about DS9's sets isn't perhaps the sets themselves, but how they were lit. That show excelled in creating visually interesting detail by judicious use if shadows and spot lighting. But it also had some nice space battle vfx, with hundreds of elements in those scenes.

    Agree about Voyager's spectacular graphics. The titles sequence is as good as it gets. And I loved Timless too.
     
  18. BrewDrinkRepeat

    BrewDrinkRepeat Forum Resident

    Location:
    Merchantville NJ
    And one of my all-time least favorite episodes is on BBC right now, "The Icarus Factor." The whole episode is pretty bad, but the ambo-jitsu (sp?) fight between Riker and his father towards the end is just sooooo bad. "The ultimate evolution in the martial arts" my fat butt.

    (The single-worst episode of the entire series, without question, has to be "Code Of Honor." Just awful by any metric.)
     
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  19. Deesky

    Deesky Forum Resident

    Yeah, that's up there with the Ferengi episodes!
     
  20. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    DS9 was much better-lit than TNG, which was often way too flat. The sets often larger on DS9 too though, which probably helped with the lighting. I suspect they were better-built as well - the TNG sets aren't all that impressive in HD.

    Voyager had by far the best sets and the lighting was a bit flat but pretty good. It looked expensive most of the time. The CGI starting with the 2nd or 3rd season was spectacular. Pity about most of the scripts, many of the characters and the acting, which apart from a couple of players was just serviceable at best.
     
  21. BrewDrinkRepeat

    BrewDrinkRepeat Forum Resident

    Location:
    Merchantville NJ
    Agreed... I found the Ferengi to be more palatable in DS9 than TNG, and even there I didn't much care for any of the episodes that focused on them (like when Quark and Nog go to visit their mother on Fereginar, or when the Nagus comes to DS9).
     
  22. BrewDrinkRepeat

    BrewDrinkRepeat Forum Resident

    Location:
    Merchantville NJ
    Despite the great visuals, I just could never get into Voyager. The characters did nothing for me (and Janeway's voice is so grating and annoying), the stories never captured by attention... I'm in the middle of rewatching DS9 from front to back on Netflix, maybe I'll try Voyager again when I'm done. The last time I tried I got about three episodes in and just gave up. :(
     
  23. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Voyager has so many problems it's hard to know where to begin. They did have a few good episodes scattered across their seven seasons, but given the character and cast issues it was an uphill battle. The biggest surprise for me was that the Borg T&A they added (6 of 9 as I liked to call her) turned out to be the most interesting character on the show, and Jeri Ryan was probably the program's best actress. Go figure.

    They should have killed half the cast off by the end of the 3rd season - would have made the program a lot more interesting.
     
  24. Deesky

    Deesky Forum Resident

    I'm exactly the opposite. I loved pretty much all the regular characters, even Neelix had his moments, especially when getting up Tuvok's nose. It's the likability of the characters (with several standouts) which is what made Voyager enjoyable for me even when watching the klunkier episodes.
     
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  25. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
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    I would have paid them money to kill off Kneelicks in the most appalling way possible. Like having him devoured from his crotch up by a horde of rabid tribbles.
     
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