f13.net

Because you're not watching TNG reruns like me?


Actually, the episode I'm watching now is "Power Play". It sucks.

In your desire to question the sanity of this thread, you are, in effect, attempting to rerail it.

Just saying.

That must be it, work sucks, big time, especially with a hangover like mine ...

Oh, I remember that one.

After finally giving Enterprise a chance, I thought it'd be a good idea to revisit the other Treks.

Well, revisit is the wrong word, since I didn't watch DS9 much before....So that was my second stop after ENT. It turned out to be some of the best Sci Fi I've ever seen...

Changed my opinion on Voyager and Next Generation though. For the most part, they both suck (I'm still on TNG season 5 though).

Would comparing Pre-DS9 Startrek with Voyager and the other stuff be some kind of rerail ?

DS9 was good for a reason. Its head writer was the same guy who's doing Battlestar Galactica now.

Hmm...Didn't realize that. I recently downloaded that too, but haven't watched an episode yet.

Do it, its good stuff ...

DS9 was awful.  Probably for just that reason.  He writes well for BG, but not for DS9...

You are, as usual, completely wrong. A worthless carebear. Why on earth would I take anything you say about DS9 seriously when it's not even backed up with a graph?

I agree, for probably a different reason.  While DS9 was good Sci Fi, it's bad Star Trek.  Star Trek is supposed to be about man's bright future and triumph of humanity.  That was Roddenberry's entire vision and reason for running the series in the first place.  DS9 was too dystopian for that.

   In fact, the head writer was on that History Channel special "How William Shatner changed History" (Which would have been better titled, "How Star Trek influenced the last 40 years.")  He stated he pretty much though Star Trek was bullshit, machines and tech are bad and the future sucks, etc.  That viewpoint is perfect for BSG.

NO.  You agree for exactly the same reasons.


I just couldn't be bothered saying that.

I love all of you.  THANK YOU.

Edit: Stray, that was a masterful derail. This if for you.

(http://themes.myqth.com/Wallpaper/Kitten%20Wallpaper.jpg)

That episode is currently running on the german Sci Fi Channel. Coincidence? I think not.

Do they air them in English over there? The way the series is going, I might enjoy them better in German dub.

What kind of cat is that? Does anybody know? The cuteness factor is off the scale. I need one of those.

We aim to please ...

http://www.obaketsu.com/

?

No all programming is dubbed german. Something I dislike with all my heart because translations usually suck. Dubs have to be cheap to not hurt the bottom line of the networks and so they are usually done by cheap hacks without a clue.

OK, so we are both germans, we are both at work and we are both bored enough to post nonsense on f13 and one of us has a decent hangover. Shouldn't we plot to invade something?

Ever watched polish TV ? They used have one "voice actor" who dubbed all and everything, women, children, the narrator ...

It was (is?) hilarious and I do not even understand polish

I am going to invade the beautifull city of Münster in a few hours.
Feel free to join me.

If F13 had a quote of the day, this would be it.

DS9 was a good show, but that's because it wasn't really a Trek show. TNG was pretty bland, with some decent characters and actors, but overall /meh. Voyager was just awful. It started out interested and went downhill.

There is no Trek but the first Trek!

Wow, dubbing over Patrick Stewart's voice should be a crime.

I didn't like DS9 much either, the plotlines were often absurd because each week they had to come up with some plausible way to import an event to the station.  It got a bit better when they got that ship and finally broke the tether that had been dragging them down.  I also thought both Quark and Odo were bad characters.  Sisko seemed one dimensional as well.  It's redeeming quality in my mind was that it had much more action, I have no loyalty to Roddenberry's vision.  I feel dirty talking about this.

I heard a terrible rumour that they are making a new Star Trek movie and that it will be a prequel starting from when Kirk met Spock at Starfleet academy.

I still find it somewhat disturbing that 2 Germans post using better english than 99% of Americans. American schools FTL  :oops:

Blasphemy!  How could you not like the Ferengi bartender with a heart of latinum and the crotchety shape-shifting lawman?

Okay, they're cheesy and one-dimensional, but I found them endlessly entertaining.

German grammar snakes grow to be upwards of 15 feet long.  There's more incentive not to piss them off.

Quark (and the Ferengi in general) was one of the biggest reasons why I liked DS9 (Garak is good too though). The show is a lot more comedic than the other Treks. With the exception of Brent Spiner, they were rarely funny.

Besides that, Gul Dukat is the shit. Star Trek hasn't had a better villain (including Khan).


Headed by the guy who created Lost, I think.

I too have come to enjoy DS9 recently, having never really watched it when it was new.  Good characters, good actors, good writing.  (And Dukat is indeed badass.)  I need to tape that episode where they travel back in time to visit Kirk and the tribbles.  My dad would get a kick out of it.

Two things that annoy me, though, are an occasional excessive focus upon Bajoran cultural stuff that I personally don't give a crap about, and an all-around ignorance of basic military tactics.  The Rhode Island National Guard could probably decimate the entire Klingon and Dominion armies in a ground battle, given the way they fight.  I mean, even bloody Stormtroopers at least know what armored vehicles are.

YES. 

Very, very true,  outside of a couple of episodes with the borg.

I didn't watch that much DS9,  but you knew the tone was going to be different because of the first episode.  It started with the borg wrecking Star Fleet and Sisko losing his wife before Picard and crew beat the borg with the 11th hour technobabble....  like they always beat everything.

Xfiles did what the original Trek did most successfully:  Monster of the week in an entertaining story with characters you like.

I would think that all the Treks (except DS9) pretty much follow that formula. DS9, otoh, kept me interested the entire way because it was more focused on giant story arcs and multi season long wars, with lots of screen time given to side characters. Different cultures besides Starfleet were explored in depth, and the villains weren't so one dimensional.

Also, the X files had it's fair share of smoking man/alien episodes as well. Not everything was monster of the week. It was kind of in between the two writing styles, if anything.

First impressions of BG (after watching the mini series) is:

Too dark, overly tragic, and militaristic for my tastes. It's definitely tapped into the current zeitgeist, I'll say that much. It's like watching the sci-fi equivalant of Blackhawk Down or United 93.

I'll take crappy Star Trek episodes over this, I think.

It gets better after the mini-series.  My wife thought it was too militaristic after the mini-series also, now she's #1 fangirl.

Edit: One caveat, the first episode is intense and rather relentless.

I liked most of Voyager. :evil:

That is not green text.  I'm scared.

The only people I know that liked Voyager were people that watched it for Ensign Kim.

Huh? He's worse than Wesley Crusher and Dr. Pulaski put together.


Oh wait, that's supposed to be in green text probably. Nevermind.


Voyager Season 6 isn't bad though (I should know. I recently watched the entire damn series in sequence).

I recently watched the whole series again also.

Kim was kind of a bad character at first...then he was decent....then they gave him the lead in some weird episodes, then he was practically a ghost for the final season or two.

Could be worse...I could actually like the Yuh-Gi-Oh shows. Ugh on a spoon is what that is.

For once I wasn't being sarcastic.  They weren't watching him for his acting though.  Kim was hugely popular within certain sub-cultures.

So I watched some old-school Trek on G4 today.  The first episode was the one where the two planets fight a computer simulated war, and march their citizens into disintegration chambers to model the casualties.  The computer decides the Enterprise is a casualty, and so the local government kidnaps Kirk and Spock and demands that the entire Enterprise crew beam down to be disintegrated.  Not surprisingly, this doesn't go over well.  The highlight was Scotty (at Kirk's behest) telling the planetary leader that he would blow up all of their major cities from orbit if they didn't quit being assholes.

Think that weenie Picard would ever have the cojones to threaten the destruction of an entire civilization as a negotiating tactic?  Not bloody likely.

Anyway, the next episode came on, and it was that "Star Trek 2.0" bullshit.  They take an episode and show it in a box about half the size of your screen, then fill the rest with idiotic web-chat from other assholes watching the show, and a bunch of other useless shit.  I wanted to see the episode, but I turned it off after about five minutes.  What sort of misbegotten bullshit is this?

I'd rather see Star Trek + Pop-up Trivia, or Star Trek + running commentary from Patrice O'Neil, but G4tv is trying desparately to completely suck gorilla ass.  And I suppose those other good ideas are owned by VH1/MTV/whoever.

I don't want any pop-ups or commentary or anything.  I just want to watch the show.  :|

Dukat was a great villain. Half the time I'd find myself liking him and then he'd do something beautifully evil. I'm definitely a fan. I also liked whats-her-name the Bajoran High Priestess. For evil, she could give Dukat a run for his money.

She plays evil well.  She was also Nurse Ratched in the movie version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Kira:  Dukat, you're a prick.
Dukat:  Whatever, I'm here on this planet to find my long-lost daughter.
Kira:  Aw, you're not such a bad guy.  I'll help.
Dukat:  Cool.
Kira:  Okay, we fought all the slavers and here's your daughter.
Dukat:  Awesome, time to shoot her!
Kira:  ZOMG NOES

Shame on me... I knew she looked familiar.

She was kind of young then though, and that's probably more understandable than this:

A couple of weeks ago I just realized that Lt. Barclay is Murdock. I didn't watch a lot of Star Trek until recently, but hell, I should have known that.

Yeah, you should've.

I liked TNG. I have not liked any other Treks I've seen. Is there like some kind of special gene I'm missing wherein a geek acquires the ability to sit through that much garbage sci-fi for a few good episodes? Maybe I'm missing the point, or maybe I'm not. I've always thought the original series, DS9, Enterprise, Voyager, etc. were all terribly boring compared to TNG.

Of course, I couldn't even make it through the BG miniseries. Didn't like Firefly either.

Maybe I just don't like sci-fi in any of its usual forms. Or maybe I like sci-fi and don't like other things parading as sci-fi (Firefly as a western, BG as a political drama, etc).

House still kicks ass though. We need a new TV thread, seasons are closing soon. Fall 2006 here we come.

There's no accounting for taste.  :rimshot:

It had some decent episodes, and I started out interested. But Janeway really started bugging the shit out of me as a character, and they never created their own villains that were worth a damn. The big kinky afro guys? Not threatening.

The Kazon. Fucking horrible.

By the way, can anyone tell me what the fuck Riker's function was?  I mean, I know he was the first officer.  Spock was the first officer on old Star Trek, but his everyday function was as the science officer.  The whole first officer thing only came into play when Kirk wasn't on the ship.  But Riker?  Even when Picard is there, he seems to have nothing to do but sit beside him playing co-captain.  Personally, I don't much like the idea of having two guys on the bridge of a ship, both of whom are permitted to bark out orders to the crew.  Seems like you would want the captain giving orders, without having to confer with his assistant to make sure he's not about to yell out something different.

To score with alien chicks?


You don't like Farscape either.  Of course, I don't blame people for not liking a show that takes more than 20 episodes to become something truly compelling.

I recently watched the original Star Trek one where the Omnipotent being basically snatches Kirk and throws him in the "Arena Planet" versus a horrible monster kinda thing as a type of test of the Human species. The planet is covered with patches of raw natural elements and such. He predictably tries fist fighting the giant gila monster looking thing, and gets owned. So he kinda wanders the planet, bitching and moaning about how he cant fight the monster when he comes up with a plan to use the natural elements to form gunpowder, and grab a tube (barrel) and some Diamonds as projectiles. He blasts the monster and is about to finish him...when Kirk realizes that if this is a test of the Human Species, he should show mercy. This of course, shows the Omnipotent being that Humans are worth keeping around and not obliterating from the face of the universe.

Great episode.

I think it was the first of many times Kirk ran into a 'god'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Officer

I dunno, that sounds about right.

The Gorn was the name of the species of gila monster thingy.  I agree great episode.  Also, that episode was featured in "Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey" in the background, because that's the same cliff the evil Bill & Ted robots throw the corpses off of.  Enjoy your useless trivia for the day.

In the original short story, the human bludgeons the alien to death with a big rock, and is returned to his ship just in time to see the entire alien fleet going up in smoke because he won the arena contest.  I think I like that ending better.

I liked that one where Kirk got hit over the head while on a planet full of what were basically American Indians, got amnesia and decided he was one of them, then spent the entire episode running around dressed like a native screaming "I AM KIR-ROK!"

When old Trek is good, it's good.  When old Trek is bad, it's even better.

I think you are just broken.

No, other genres masquerading as sci-fi are broken. I'm merely a purist.

Science fiction is a setting.  If you don't do anything with it besides try to be "science fictioney" you end up with...  Well you end up with TNG and every problem being solved by Geordi dramatically explaining how he can cross-modulate the phase nacelle warp coil flux capacitor through his left testicle.

TNG just annoyed the shit outta me.  The Enterprise had the aesthetics of a dentist's waiting room, it was filled with children and families even though it seemed criminally irresponsible to put them aboard the closest thing the Federation had to a battleship, and two thirds of the series was spent either listening to people prattle on to the ship's shrink or else watching them jerk their puds on the holodeck.

I did like the one episode where Troi's mother blundered into Picard's noir-detective holodeck fantasy.  She kept chatting up the bartender while Picard looked flabbergasted trying to think of a polite way to tell her she was about to cyber an NPC.

I never considered Firefly to be a sci-fi show, just a clever little space opra.  (I do not think space opra must equal sci-fi.)

Seeing Picard trying to light up a cig just cracks me up..

Holodeck episodes are good in general.....Says a lot about the quality of the actual "sci fi" really.

[edit] Watching "A Fistful of Datas" at the moment...

If you really wanted to give it a chance, the development of both The Doctor (Robert Picardo) and 7 of 9 (Jeri Ryan) as characters are pretty much the best parts of the entire series. Granted, they both had "stupid" episodes (less so in the case of 7), but they were the two most compelling characters on the show, by far.

Hell, the most enjoyable episodes are the ones that star both The Doctor and 7. Especially the one where the crew stumbles into the territory of a society hostile towards holograms, and 7 is forced to "hide" The Doctor's program in one of her cybernetic implants and unknowningly gives him complete control over her conscious cognitive functions (physical actions, speech, etc).

I'd include Tom Paris as well, but agreed, the Doctor is the main reason for watching ("Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy" stands out). And Seven, for whatever "assets" she was intended to bring to the series, actually made things more watchable on a variety of levels.

Still though, the writers started relying on them a bit too much. There are more Doctor and Seven episodes than anything else. They could have spent some of that time creating Delta Quadrant races that didn't suck. The most interesting aliens in Voyager are the Borg -- That's not a good thing.

Oh, I forgot Paris, and Torres to a lesser degree.

But yes, most of the alien races were....bleh.

I didn't watch the Seven of 9 era. I pegged her inclusion pretty early as 1) pander to the geeks wilted testicles and 2) pander to the geeks wilted Trekkie dreams with the Borg. /sadf

The Doctor was the best part of the show. Hell, I like Paris and Kim and Chakote(?) the first officer who was a Maqui. But they used most of them in criminal ways to play off of Janeway. Janeway started off as a character I could get behind, then she just kicked her Bitch-engine into 3rd gear.

That episode bothered me.  Not enough mirrors or masturbation.

I started noticing Dwight Schultz more when I found him playing Hoxie in Escape from Butcher Bay.  Turns out he's been doing game voices for a while, going back to Fallout 2.  He has been in a good bit of Final Fantasy stuff since Spirits Within, too.  The fifteen most-recent entries in his IMDB listing (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0776239/) is very game heavy.

She's actually not a bad actress. I think she handled the role very well. Stuff that any normal person takes for granted, that a Borg would know nothing about, I think she played out very well. It wouldn't hurt you to give her a shot - Jeri Ryan ended up being a much more enjoyable actor to watch (on an acting level) than the ever-befudeled-by-life Kim, or Chakotay. Occasionaly Neeliz was nice to watch, but he was mostly annoying. On of the character's best episodes is the one where he is combined with Tuvok (Vulcan).

When I caught Voyager episodes several years back, I thought Neelix was amusing. Not so anymore. He's got to be one of the most obnoxious characters ever.

There was a pretty hilarious episode once where Tuvok was going through the Vulcan "mating period" and losing grasp of his emotions. For some reason, Neelix thought it was a good time to poke and prod Tuvok about "having fun" (as Neelix is usually inclined to do). The Vulcan decided to not take any of his shit for a change and nearly choked him to death.

Too bad he didn't end it all right there.

The Tuvix episode was depressing, but yeah, it was good. Talk about Janeway kicking her "bitch engine" into third gear.

I would have rather they stuck with Tuvix then have Tuvok (decent character) but also Neelix (blech).

And zomg, I forgot about Naomi Wildman, who held the entire show together.

Vanessa Branch (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0104376/) isn't too bad on the eyes.... Oh you mean as a child.

Consider giving her a shot in other works.  I wouldn't recommend going back to watch Voyager just for the sake of seeing her in it.

I do have to agree that she was one of the show's best actors, despite my belief that she wasn't hired because of her talent.

Ah, Pirates of the Carribean 3 is filming.

One of my earliest memories is walking around the neighborhood and seeing this through the window of a neighbor's house (http://www.tvacres.com/simians_apes_mugato.htm).  It was so cool I sat there in the bushes with my bud while we watched the rest of the episode.

Ugh.  BTW this was before syndication. :P