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A Dedicated Thread For Talking About Star Trek Episodes

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I signed up for the USS Venture in Europe (dunno whether it's actually region-locked or how they're intending to do it).

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I rewatched TNG's The Drumhead, and DS9's Past Tense.  Great episodes that are even more pertinent than I expect prior to the rewatches.

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I watched five condensed seasons of DS9 when I was bed-ridden for almost two weeks. It's a good show, although I'm not in love with the changeling stuff. 

 

Stupidly, my main motivation to write this post is to whine about the theme music. It starts out really boring compared to the TNG and TOS themes. Then, in the fourth season they try to spice it up and they just ruin it. I think they sped it up digitally and something about the process makes the horns sound horrid. I have to fast forward through the intro every time or I'll feel nauseous. 

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On ‎11‎/‎24‎/‎2016 at 5:34 AM, brkl said:

Stupidly, my main motivation to write this post is to whine about the theme music. It starts out really boring compared to the TNG and TOS themes. Then, in the fourth season they try to spice it up and they just ruin it. I think they sped it up digitally and something about the process makes the horns sound horrid. I have to fast forward through the intro every time or I'll feel nauseous. 

 

I once made a similar remark

 

On ‎1‎/‎21‎/‎2014 at 9:55 AM, SecretAsianMan said:

This is a really dumb observation, but the intro to DS9 is super boring.  Shots of the station with credits over it gets old quick.  Granted, it's better than TNG with names floating in space as the Enterprise zips around, but I think Voyager has the best.  Those scenes of planets and stuff are actually nice to look at.  Watching it pass through a blue cloud, the reflection in a planet's rings, the shadow it casts when backlit.  I still think it's pretty, even now.

 

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Yup, the TNG intro is dumb with the Enterprise coming at you with whooshing sound effects. The music has a lot of life to it, though. I never watched Voyager and can't say I fell in love with it checking the intro out now, although I'll agree the visuals are nicer than the other ones mentioned. 

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I do quite like the Voyager intro. I used to get its theme mixed up with Fanfare for the Common Man a lot and was therefore unreasonably pleased when my mum took me to a concert when I was younger and they played Fanfare.

 

Also, has anyone watched For the Love of Spock? It's a documentary made by Adam Nimoy, Leonard Nimoy's son, that they had begun working on for Star Trek's 50th anniversary before Leonard died. So it shifted focus and became all about Leonard Nimoy's life as well as the creation and effects of the Spock character.

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I've seen it and I really enjoyed learning more about Nimoy. Then again, I'm a fan. It's only partly fan servicey and goes to some darker parts of Nimoy's character as well. It does have too many actors talking about how much Spock meant for them. I could have done without any Abrams' Star Trek actors interviews. On the other hand, it's interesting to hear what the TOS actors have to say. I would recommend it. 

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On 28/11/2016 at 2:48 PM, brkl said:

Yup, the TNG intro is dumb with the Enterprise coming at you with whooshing sound effects. The music has a lot of life to it, though. I never watched Voyager and can't say I fell in love with it checking the intro out now, although I'll agree the visuals are nicer than the other ones mentioned. 

The TNG intro is essentially a retread of TOS, though. DS9 and Voyager seem interminably long, though probably aren't longer than TNG. The TNG music gets your pulse going even though there's less going on visually.

 

I've probably said this before, but Enterprise would have been 50% better instantly if it had used the First Contact theme. And it would have been a nice little callback to TNG pilfering from The Motion Picture.

 

...aaaaand after a quick google, of course it's been done. Maybe needs a speedier arrangement, but it works. 50%, instantly!

 

 

 

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I started watching TNG again, I'd forgotten how preachy Star Trek is. They even end most episodes outright stating the moral of the story. At least in season 1

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TNG's first season is... not strong. It's probably my overall favourite of the Star Trek series, but it definitely takes a bit to find its footing. I saw an episode from the first season again the other day and the acting was actually outright bad.

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I'm going through season 2 right now. It's finding its groove! I was very surprised to encounter Borg halfway through season 2 already, I thought they'd take way longer to set that up and that we'd first deal with the Romulans who, as a threat, have been building up since the goddamn original series without ever going anywhere.

 

I just had the season 2 Lwaxana episode. It was precious.

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3 hours ago, Roderick said:

I'm going through season 2 right now. It's finding its groove! I was very surprised to encounter Borg halfway through season 2 already, I thought they'd take way longer to set that up and that we'd first deal with the Romulans who, as a threat, have been building up since the goddamn original series without ever going anywhere.

 

I just had the season 2 Lwaxana episode. It was precious.

 

I believe that the Borg were introduced because the producers for TNG realized that they had mishandled the Romulans. All the interesting features of the Romulans were predicated on their mysteriousness, their potential for violent action, and their unpredictability, so they'd become just another alien race if they ever came into open conflict with the Federation. The Borg were designed to be the antidote to that dynamic: all of their features were predicated on their belligerence, so they couldn't be "ruined" like the Romulans could.

 

Now, the Borg getting ruined in other ways...

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I've just started Voyager and it seems like it's much more of a hard sci-fi focused show than TNG and especially DS9.  I'm only 3-4 episodes in so I'm not sure if it'll stay like this, but so far every episode has had some sort of convoluted plot involving quantum singularities or subspace fractures or whatever and there hasn't be much focus on the characters.  I'm watching concurrently with DS9 so I don't mind having one be the show with the interesting characters and the other being the show with the Twilight Zone speculative fiction plots, but I'm sure the show will change as time goes on.  Also I love Robert Picardo. 

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It's probably difficult to go back through this thread during a watchthrough and stop before you hit spoilers, as there are a ton of different viewing levels overlapping, but y'all should definitely post your thoughts as you progress and then have a read through the thread once you're done!

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Voyager is very prone to techno babble and boring combat sequences, but there are character focused episodes too. The good Voyager episodes are really good.

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Good sum-up article for Discovery: http://www.gamesradar.com/star-trek-discovery-news-cast-trailer/

 

A few points: set 10 years before TOS, will ignore nu-Trek but redesign a lot of stuff; "very cinematic, very high production value, and grittier"; GoT-level sex and violence a possibility if the show runners want to, as they're online; redesigned Klingons (possibly per 'house' rather than species-wide) and other species; will be on Netflix a day or so after CBS; Rainn Wilson is Harry Mudd; James Frain is Sarek; this big-ass trailer which, thank goodness, confirms that there will be a scene in which a female crew-member is down to her underwear to get space-scanned or whatever:

 

 

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merritt k hosts a podcast about dads called dadfeelings and August is Star Trek month. last week was Jean-Luc Picard and this week is Benjamin Sisko

http://dadfeelings.com it's a very good podcast and I recommend you check  it out (and a bunch of the other episodes as well!)

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17 minutes ago, Ben X said:

"very cinematic, very high production value, and grittier"

I'd seen the trailer so I already knew that that was how they were approaching the show, but man that's basically the most off-putting way to pitch a Star Trek show to me.  I was hoping the movies meant they could have all their fun and action and lens flares in those and have the TV show stay modest and focused on interesting ideas instead of cinematic set-pieces.  Oh well, I guess I hope it does well because if it does the chances of me getting something new that I like are higher than if it flops and gets canned, but I will most likely not watch Discover at all.

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3 minutes ago, TheLastBaron said:

I'd seen the trailer so I already knew that that was how they were approaching the show, but man that's basically the most off-putting way to pitch a Star Trek show to me.  I was hoping the movies meant they could have all their fun and action and lens flares in those and have the TV show stay modest and focused on interesting ideas instead of cinematic set-pieces.  Oh well, I guess I hope it does well because if it does the chances of me getting something new that I like are higher than if it flops and gets canned, but I will most likely not watch Discover at all.

 

Yeah, I thought we already had "grittier" Star Trek TV with Enterprise and that was the worst of the lot, but maybe narrative grit is like real-life grit and you can't get rid of it once you've added it in.

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I'm also not overly enthused by the idea of another prequel. I'm not sure why they keep going that way.

 

Oh well, we'll see how it turns out - I'd still like to see some more good Star Trek in my life!

 

Edit: Oh, I also didn't realise until watching that trailer that they seem to be going with an actual protagonist this time, and that said protagonist is not the captain. That's... potentially interesting? But not necessarily hugely "Star Trek".

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The whole thing looks like CGI to me, kinda off putting. I mean, obviously at least the human faces aren't, but even they look so post-processed that they're close to CGI

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I'm watching a Voyager episode and I'm not very far in, but so far it's just Chakotay talking about spirit animals and Kim talking about an ancient Chinese curse.  This is like the 5th episode or so so I get that none of the characters are really established at this point and are all pretty one-dimensional, but so far it's kind of just... yeah.

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