A Dedicated Thread For Talking About Star Trek Episodes

[natellite]

I think they did way better with Romulans in DS9 than in TNG. There are a couple of really good Romulan arcs in DS9.

[Bjorn]

The Romulans were always kind of surprisingly boring, given that they were meant to serve as the cultural counterpoint to their cousins the Vulcans.  The Klingons fit that role much better, being the emotional species with a real lust for life.

[Ben X]

The 90s Trek adventure games just got their digital debut on GOG.

[Gaizokubanou]

I think they did way better with Romulans in DS9 than in TNG. There are a couple of really good Romulan arcs in DS9.

 

Yeah DS9 is best suited to deal with subterfuge out of all of StarTrek, and with subterfuge Romulans actually get to shine quite a bit.  Still ends up overlapping quite a lot with Cardassians though.

[Gwardinen]

The 90s Trek adventure games just got their digital debut on GOG.

 

I saw that. I played the shit out of Starfleet Academy back in the day. I'm actually skimming through

 to get the nostalgia of the FMVs (!) between missions and such.

[mikemariano]

All right!  Time to play Secret of Vulcan Fury!

[Professor Video Games]

The 90s Trek adventure games just got their digital debut on GOG.

 

Are any of them any good?

[Bjorn]

I remember quite liking 25th Anniversary, it's setup like it's a series of episodes instead of one big long arc.  And you can get redshirts killed.  But that's about all I remember about it.  I do have one very clear memory of an annoying puzzle involving opening an alien door that took me forever to complete. 

[Gwardinen]

Part of me wants to try those games, but a much larger part is completely done with point and click adventure games. I simply don't find their dodgy interfaces and inscrutable logic entertaining anymore. I'm fairly sure if I played those games I'd just be annoyed that I was being prevented from seeing the story.

[SecretAsianMan]

With hindsight, that's probably true. From what little I've seen of the start of TNG, Tasha was pretty boring. Whereas she's given quite a lot to do in the later cameos, particularly Yesterday's Enterprise. Her as a Romulan was also sort of boring, though. For them being such a major antagonist in so much of TNG, I never really felt like they figured out how to portray Romulans interestingly. With the possible exception of the episode with Troi disguised as a Tal Shiar officer, which had a few good moments of weird Romulan inter-departmental paranoia.

 

Random side fact: initially, Crosby had auditioned for the role of Troi and Sirtis read for the role of Yar.  After hearing them both, Roddenberry decided they would be suited for the opposite roles and switched them.

[Dewar]

With hindsight, that's probably true. From what little I've seen of the start of TNG, Tasha was pretty boring. Whereas she's given quite a lot to do in the later cameos, particularly Yesterday's Enterprise. Her as a Romulan was also sort of boring, though. For them being such a major antagonist in so much of TNG, I never really felt like they figured out how to portray Romulans interestingly. With the possible exception of the episode with Troi disguised as a Tal Shiar officer, which had a few good moments of weird Romulan inter-departmental paranoia.

To be fair, a lot of the characters were pretty boring at that stage. Worf in particular had no depth what-so-ever and look where he ended up, one of the longest running and deeper characters in Star Trek.

[feelthedarkness]

The Romulans always seemed like the race they were keeping in a back pocket for another series. The empire was huge and prosperous but they only gave you a few inside looks to their society, then Nemesis comes along and ruins them. 

[syntheticgerbil]

What is cooler, the Enterprise evading the Doomsday machine or facing it and firing at it? The lasers were pretty cheesy, even in the new 3D scenes, but I don't necessarily have to interpret it that way.

 

(I'm drawing a licensed Star Trek print of this scene if my question is confusing.)

[SecretAsianMan]

Which Enterprise?  It actually does matter to a degree.

[Dewar]

I think the part when it's escaping as the other ship falls into its maw and blows up? It's been a while since I've seen the episode.

[Cordeos]

I just started The Animated Series. I didn't realise it was the whole TOS cast, i guess i assumed it had more changes. I do like the shorter episodes so far since the bad writers have less of a chance to pile up BS.

[syntheticgerbil]

Oh original series one, and not the other one that's already broken.

[Bjorn]

I'd go with escaping.  The Enterprise pulling a cool maneuver is more "Star Trek" to me than it just blasting something. 

[Bjorn]

Apparently Dorn is still trying to push his Worf TV series forward, and has been drumming up some fan support for it. 

[Salacious Snake]

What is cooler, the Enterprise evading the Doomsday machine or facing it and firing at it? The lasers were pretty cheesy, even in the new 3D scenes, but I don't necessarily have to interpret it that way.

 

(I'm drawing a licensed Star Trek print of this scene if my question is confusing.)

 

The staging in the new version where the ship is weaving around looked cheesy to me.

 

On that subject in general, I don't like the special effects in the remastered version. At least, I don't like the exterior space stuff. I understand why they did it, because the original stock is so degraded, but I'll still take the old grainy stuff.

 

The worst side-effect of the switch is that when they dissolve from an interior shot to an exterior, they have to start the dissolve earlier to avoid the original frames where the models start coming in (or later when fading the other way). The timing is all out of whack, and sometimes you have characters still talking when the fade starts. Messing with the timing like that makes things really awkward, especially in relation to musical cues. 

 

Luckily the blu-rays let you pick the old effects while still getting the benefit of the sweet as hell digital transfer, so it's the best of both worlds.

 

I feel like such a nerd purist complaining about the "new and improved" version of an old beloved thing, but there are real compromises in the execution.

[syntheticgerbil]

Oh I guess I wasn't clear, I totally hate that they replaced the original models with 3D. The 3D also already looks dated by far. There was no reason to do that, plus you lose a little history in the evolution of special effect as well. I don't feel like being a purist in that case is at all a bad thing. I have the same issues with the special editions of the first three Star Wars. It looks incredibly dated now and it had the added bonus of creating additional scenes that didn't fit. I think if people are going to use CG to update things, it should be like the Blade Runner blu-ray editions where it's just work done to fix little mistakes like the different face for the stunt actress when she is gunned down.

 

Also when they were looking at the stuff from the inside out of the screen, it looked really out of place, like bad compositing just because the elements were obviously from two completely different time periods.

[Bjorn]

A gaming company in China built a building sized Enterprise to use as their headquarters.  The chairman of the company is from my alma mater, and apparently a giant trekkie.

[SecretAsianMan]

China does have a love of unusually shaped buildings.

[natellite]

If he's supposedly a giant trekkie, why use the 1701-E? Fake geek boys, I swear.

[Cordeos]

As I continue to watch the Star Trek animated series, I am beginning to realize it was very much a fan service show. So many of the episodes have been rehashing of TOS episodes. I'm still on season one and so far Mudd, Tribbles, the time travel gate thing and the planet where dreams come true have all made an appearance. The only thing I really like about the animated series is that it allows for a lot more non-human crew and non-humanoid aliens.