I hear arguments for TOS, TNG, and DS9 as being the best series. My personal favorite is DS9, but I can definitely see how the other two shows can be a contender. In the Pale Moonlight and The Visitor are the standout episodes, but I think I just find the characters and their story arcs much more interesting on DS9. Gul Dukat and Kai Winn are probably some of my favorite villains of all time.
Every time Kai Winn showed up, I wanted to punch her in the face, and then I realized "Hey, that's REALLY good acting!" Unless she's like that in real life... I'm sure she's not...
"Regina Fong" pointed out in the Star Trek thread that she's from Alabama. So you can just replace "Walk with the Prophets" with "Aww bless your heart" as what she says, mentally, and realize she's probably just playing a space-version of an archetype she's familiar with.
then also remember she played Nurse Ratched and you see alot of that character in Winn
holy shit
mind blown
did you not know that?
Today is his lucky day that he gets to find out something cool!
I hear arguments for TOS, TNG, and DS9 as being the best series. My personal favorite is DS9, but I can definitely see how the other two shows can be a contender. In the Pale Moonlight and The Visitor are the standout episodes, but I think I just find the characters and their story arcs much more interesting on DS9. Gul Dukat and Kai Winn are probably some of my favorite villains of all time.
Every time Kai Winn showed up, I wanted to punch her in the face, and then I realized "Hey, that's REALLY good acting!" Unless she's like that in real life... I'm sure she's not...
"Regina Fong" pointed out in the Star Trek thread that she's from Alabama. So you can just replace "Walk with the Prophets" with "Aww bless your heart" as what she says, mentally, and realize she's probably just playing a space-version of an archetype she's familiar with.
then also remember she played Nurse Ratched and you see alot of that character in Winn
holy shit
mind blown
did you not know that?
I only watched One Flew Over once, so I never made that connection
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
0
HakkekageSpace Whore Academysumma cum laudeRegistered Userregular
@Organichu Beast and I are making Keto peanut butter/chocolate ice cream (using an ice cream machine he bought off amazon a year ago)
I am excited
Will report on results
What's the difference between regular peanut chocolate ice cream and keto one?
stevia as a sweetener instead of sugar, overemphasis on eggs and heavy cream, unsweetened chocolate
I've made this (sans peanut butter, but that also sounds delicious!). It took a few tries before I got it to be satisfactory for my tastes, but it was a GRAND experiment involving a month of making and eating ice cream. "No... it's not quite right. I'd better make another batch."
Safeway has a low carb Butter Pecan now! 4 net carbs per serving. That's low enough to be, like, "I don't give a fuck how much of this I eat". I missed Butter Pecan, so this was a godsend.
I've been making Flax Seed Coffee Mug muffins recently. It's something like 1/4 cup of ground flax seed (which a lot of labels say is 1g net carb per 2 tablespoons, but they round fractions... real ground flax seed is something like 0.1 to 0.3 net carb per Tablespoon, per most nutrition books, which is way lower), 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder, a small slice of butter, some cinnamon and artificial sweetener to taste and 1 egg. Mix it all in a coffee mug well (no lumps), microwave for 1 minute.
The muffins aren't awesomely fantastic (YET), BUT I always regarded muffins as a medium upon which I smear butter or jam, and this is perfect for that purpose.
I haven't had muffins or breadlike substances for months, now, so my taste may be a bit skewed at this point.
At this point I'm paying fast and loose with Keto and don't intend to keep up with it after my birthday (3 weeks). I can't fathom having to always be stocking up on specialty ingredients to make a semblance of what I really desire--aka a real muffin god dammit. Though that does sound easy to make.
Re this ice cream: currently hardening in freezer. Liberally licked off the spoons we used to mix in the peanut butter. So good. So good. I missed ice cream. OMG. Can't wait to eat when it is hardened for real
So some background before watching this;
I did some digging and found out about this girl named Gloria Tesch who's written some extremely long, hacky fantasy novels that are essentially a Narnia knock-off. Her dad, who's apparently a multi-millionaire businessman in Florida, has taken it upon himself to direct a series of movies based on his daughter's books.
In the tradition of Samurai Cop, The Room, Birdemic and Fateful Findings, I give you...
Neelix was also one of the worst examples of, fuck i don't know the term for this, some TV Tropes nerd probably has a name for this
where a show keeps ramming this obnoxious as fuck character in the audience's face with absolutely no awareness that the fans hate the character and find them terrible and they keep trying and trying to make the character popular for no reason
like maybe the production like the actor involved and they want to keep him on the show or someone high up likes the character but for whatever reason they think the character is essential so they keep on keeping on with this shitty character and it never ever works
there's "Neelix episodes" in every season of Voyager and they're always awful and exist for no reason
Voyager had a really hard time figuring out which characters and actors were actually good and featuring them
like for example, they kept doing episodes about Harry Kim
because
i don't know, they hate themselves
The TVTropes name is actually pretty appropriate: The Wesley.
SHUT UP, WESLEY
SHUT UP, NEELIX
SHUT UP UH
shit who do I hate on DS9
I hate Winn but you're supposed to and I do not hate her in the same way
@Pony did you ever read the book Andrew J. Robinson wrote based on his time playing Garak? It was actually a great Garak story.
I guess while playing him he wrote a daily journal in character. Garak was a character with a huge background a lot thanks to the actor.
i have not
i generally avoided star trek books because they were poop from a butt
So do I.
It was I think one of 3 I ever read?
It was unique because it was written about Garak on Cardassia after the war by the actor who played Garak based on his notes and journals playing the character through the show.
"it's easy to be a saint in paradise" is a thing that DS9 hits on over and over
that yeah great, the Federation sure are the galaxy's moral compass
boy howdy is it really hard for them to be shining examples of morality when nobody is hungry or wanting for anything, hell they even seem to have solved basically every social problem
I'm glad DS9 and later TNG widened the cracks on the Federation a bit. Gene's vision of a "more evolved humanity" was actually kind of dumb
JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
TOS, TNG, and DS9 are all different shows and are good for different reasons and I think which one you prefer is going to boil down to what you enjoy in a show.
DS9 is the most modern-feeling as it ran until like 1999 and it has the most consequential ongoing plot (although the arc plotting is weird and stoppy-starty by modern serial drama standards). It also makes exploring murky ethical territory a central element of the storytelling - which isn't to say that it's the first to do so (as some fans claim), but it definitely places a higher priority on it.
TNG is the character-focused one. They managed to craft a show populated almost entirely by these immensely likeable archetypal people who are equally watchable dealing with personal issues or saving the human race from some epic, widescreen-scale menage. The show's stories are uneven, although it has three or four of some of the best Star Trek seasons ever, which is pretty churlish to complain about, but from the first episode to the last, the characters power it.
TOS is the fun, exciting, adventurous one. Every single week is packed with a new terrifying menace that can only be defeated by science, ethical humanism, and judo. Where the modern shows were often kind of slowly-paced in a self-important WE'RE TALKING ABOUT ISSUES kind of way, the original show was unabashed good times - it was always trying to be either scary, exciting, or funny - and remains really watchable as a result. This is also why I make a jack-off motion when someone complains that the new movies "aren't Star Trek" because explosions happen in them.
the funniest thing is yeah the Federation is paradise. and what do it's people all do for fun?
FUCKING COSPLAY
0
ShivahnUnaware of her barrel shifter privilegeWestern coastal temptressRegistered User, Moderatormod
I did like how Winn's final arc was basically something straight out of Christian mythos. The greedy holy (wo)man, led astray by the devil's temptations and her exploitable pride.
There was a lot I didn't like about how it was handled, but the general concept was something I enjoyed. It's almost a Greek tragedy with a Catholic deadly sin as the tragic flaw.
Neelix was also one of the worst examples of, fuck i don't know the term for this, some TV Tropes nerd probably has a name for this
where a show keeps ramming this obnoxious as fuck character in the audience's face with absolutely no awareness that the fans hate the character and find them terrible and they keep trying and trying to make the character popular for no reason
like maybe the production like the actor involved and they want to keep him on the show or someone high up likes the character but for whatever reason they think the character is essential so they keep on keeping on with this shitty character and it never ever works
there's "Neelix episodes" in every season of Voyager and they're always awful and exist for no reason
Voyager had a really hard time figuring out which characters and actors were actually good and featuring them
like for example, they kept doing episodes about Harry Kim
because
i don't know, they hate themselves
in Voyager's specific case I'm sure it had something to do with they were probably used to a decade+ of Star Trek fans complaining about everything that they just kind of tuned out the legitimate complaints along with everything else. And in their minds, it was the best-rated show on the network so clearly they were doing something right, yes?
Of course, the problem is that even awful fan nerds are sometimes right, and UPN was the network that featured Homeboys in Outer Space.
I wonder, in the age of social media, are there any modern shows that are so wildly dismissive of the people who watch them? It seems like Voyager2015 either could not happen or their twitter dude would be working a lot of overtime.
yeah around the time of DS9, all the core people of Star Trek kinda crystallized and just did their own thing regardless of what fans thought
I don't think nowadays that kind of thinking works, shows are too in tune with their communities now, for good or for ill
Everything I've read about DS9 suggests that it wasn't ignoring the fans that gave us DS9's quality, it was that Rick Berman wasn't hands-on enough on it to ruin it.
what i mean is
that's when they just sorta turned into The Core Star Trek People
Rick Berman, Brannon Braga, Michael Pillar, Jeri Taylor, etc.
Ron Moore was still around during the DS9 days which was a good thing because this was before BSG let him crawl inside his own asshole
but in the latter days of DS9, around the time Voyager was being conceived, there was just a core group of people who were the Star Trek brain trust and they felt they knew what Star Trek was and they didn't really listen to anyone else on the subject
and Voyager was kind of the result of that thinking
In retrospect BSG may well represent Ron Moore catching the "don't listen to anyone about anything" disease a few years later
+3
ShivahnUnaware of her barrel shifter privilegeWestern coastal temptressRegistered User, Moderatormod
Neelix was also one of the worst examples of, fuck i don't know the term for this, some TV Tropes nerd probably has a name for this
where a show keeps ramming this obnoxious as fuck character in the audience's face with absolutely no awareness that the fans hate the character and find them terrible and they keep trying and trying to make the character popular for no reason
like maybe the production like the actor involved and they want to keep him on the show or someone high up likes the character but for whatever reason they think the character is essential so they keep on keeping on with this shitty character and it never ever works
there's "Neelix episodes" in every season of Voyager and they're always awful and exist for no reason
Voyager had a really hard time figuring out which characters and actors were actually good and featuring them
like for example, they kept doing episodes about Harry Kim
because
i don't know, they hate themselves
in Voyager's specific case I'm sure it had something to do with they were probably used to a decade+ of Star Trek fans complaining about everything that they just kind of tuned out the legitimate complaints along with everything else. And in their minds, it was the best-rated show on the network so clearly they were doing something right, yes?
Of course, the problem is that even awful fan nerds are sometimes right, and UPN was the network that featured Homeboys in Outer Space.
I wonder, in the age of social media, are there any modern shows that are so wildly dismissive of the people who watch them? It seems like Voyager2015 either could not happen or their twitter dude would be working a lot of overtime.
yeah around the time of DS9, all the core people of Star Trek kinda crystallized and just did their own thing regardless of what fans thought
I don't think nowadays that kind of thinking works, shows are too in tune with their communities now, for good or for ill
Everything I've read about DS9 suggests that it wasn't ignoring the fans that gave us DS9's quality, it was that Rick Berman wasn't hands-on enough on it to ruin it.
what i mean is
that's when they just sorta turned into The Core Star Trek People
Rick Berman, Brannon Braga, Michael Pillar, Jeri Taylor, etc.
Ron Moore was still around during the DS9 days which was a good thing because this was before BSG let him crawl inside his own asshole
but in the latter days of DS9, around the time Voyager was being conceived, there was just a core group of people who were the Star Trek brain trust and they felt they knew what Star Trek was and they didn't really listen to anyone else on the subject
and Voyager was kind of the result of that thinking
In retrospect BSG may well represent Ron Moore catching the "don't listen to anyone about anything" disease a few years later
I agree, including himself.
The DVD commentary makes it clear that by the end even he didn't know what he was about to do next.
Another SF Debris theory I like: Wolf 359 is the Federation's 9/11 moment.
Everything from Star Trek VI onwards is the 1990's, give or take. No real existential threats, we bring families on board our ships and we were toying with whales.
Then the Borg comes and puts paid to all the little fictions they have.
So the Federation gets more militant. It starts small: Admiral McCarthy in the Drumhead riling up fears of the Romulans. But it gets worse. The late TNG/early DS9 attempts to placate the Cardassians so as not to deal with a security headache. Enterprise's sister ship the Odyssey has two fifths of her crew and a lot more weapons, and that's before the Jem Hadar destroy it and gives them even more to worry about.
Is it a coincidence that it's during TNG's later years that Riker's old CO is seeking the illegal cloaking device, or is it a drive to develop any edge to defend the Federation?
It is literally something that only works with hindsight, but it fits surprisingly well.
+3
spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Man, spending time at my dad's house makes me so mad about real estate. He lives on 3 acres in a 5,000 sq ft house with a pool, hot tub, and a basement big enough for two pool tables, two pinball machines, an air hockey table a bar and a media room and it's probably only worth $700k in Northern NJ. I couldn't touch that house for less then 1.8mm in Long Island
I still enjoy the shit out of BSG. I was rewatching it again recently. The first 2 seasons are just adrenaline and stress inducing TV in the best way. 33 is still one of the best episodes out there.
And even with some of the dumb of the last two seasons it still was a great show and I think some of the issues was them falling into the, "holy shit it is still going?" mixed with "Bubble of no one saying no."
JMS with B5 is one of the few before the show was even shot had the major points and characters planned from start to finish and the last season is a mess because they thought they were canceled after season 4 so they sped up and compressed some of her stories.
+1
ShivahnUnaware of her barrel shifter privilegeWestern coastal temptressRegistered User, Moderatormod
I did like how Winn's final arc was basically something straight out of Christian mythos. The greedy holy (wo)man, led astray by the devil's temptations and her exploitable pride.
There was a lot I didn't like about how it was handled, but the general concept was something I enjoyed. It's almost a Greek tragedy with a Catholic deadly sin as the tragic flaw.
This is actually one of my favorite recent examples of knowing EXACTLY WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN because I've seen this story before, and still being like WHAT HAPPENS
+1
ShivahnUnaware of her barrel shifter privilegeWestern coastal temptressRegistered User, Moderatormod
I've always had a soft spot for TNG, because I think it was so far better than its peers when it came out. DS9 has held up better over time because DS9 was really a great show, with complex characters and a solid political backdrop providing constant motivation for everyone involved and some cheesy but ultimately enjoyable acting.
TNG was ahead of its time, so I remember it more fondly, but going back to watch TNG is kind of a dangerous nostalgia, since so many episodes end up being worse than one might remember.
I'd love some massive TV service to start a new Star Trek series and take it in a different direction than the enjoyable-but-empty Abrams films. If only there was some sort of massive streaming service that was expanding into creating television
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Today is his lucky day that he gets to find out something cool!
I guess while playing him he wrote a daily journal in character. Garak was a character with a huge background a lot thanks to the actor.
I only watched One Flew Over once, so I never made that connection
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
At this point I'm paying fast and loose with Keto and don't intend to keep up with it after my birthday (3 weeks). I can't fathom having to always be stocking up on specialty ingredients to make a semblance of what I really desire--aka a real muffin god dammit. Though that does sound easy to make.
Re this ice cream: currently hardening in freezer. Liberally licked off the spoons we used to mix in the peanut butter. So good. So good. I missed ice cream. OMG. Can't wait to eat when it is hardened for real
NNID: Hakkekage
Stealing this from NeoGAF
I love Kira's deer in headlights look.
"Really."
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
i have not
i generally avoided star trek books because they were poop from a butt
Oh my god the implication
kek
So do I.
It was I think one of 3 I ever read?
It was unique because it was written about Garak on Cardassia after the war by the actor who played Garak based on his notes and journals playing the character through the show.
"it's easy to be a saint in paradise" is a thing that DS9 hits on over and over
that yeah great, the Federation sure are the galaxy's moral compass
boy howdy is it really hard for them to be shining examples of morality when nobody is hungry or wanting for anything, hell they even seem to have solved basically every social problem
I'm glad DS9 and later TNG widened the cracks on the Federation a bit. Gene's vision of a "more evolved humanity" was actually kind of dumb
he is the worst douche in the universe for like, a season or two
then somewhere he spontaneously becomes actually great
Oh it reminds me of that Timbaland song:
It's too late to resoberfy
It's too late
It's too late to resoberfy
It's too late
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
DS9 is the most modern-feeling as it ran until like 1999 and it has the most consequential ongoing plot (although the arc plotting is weird and stoppy-starty by modern serial drama standards). It also makes exploring murky ethical territory a central element of the storytelling - which isn't to say that it's the first to do so (as some fans claim), but it definitely places a higher priority on it.
TNG is the character-focused one. They managed to craft a show populated almost entirely by these immensely likeable archetypal people who are equally watchable dealing with personal issues or saving the human race from some epic, widescreen-scale menage. The show's stories are uneven, although it has three or four of some of the best Star Trek seasons ever, which is pretty churlish to complain about, but from the first episode to the last, the characters power it.
TOS is the fun, exciting, adventurous one. Every single week is packed with a new terrifying menace that can only be defeated by science, ethical humanism, and judo. Where the modern shows were often kind of slowly-paced in a self-important WE'RE TALKING ABOUT ISSUES kind of way, the original show was unabashed good times - it was always trying to be either scary, exciting, or funny - and remains really watchable as a result. This is also why I make a jack-off motion when someone complains that the new movies "aren't Star Trek" because explosions happen in them.
FUCKING COSPLAY
There was a lot I didn't like about how it was handled, but the general concept was something I enjoyed. It's almost a Greek tragedy with a Catholic deadly sin as the tragic flaw.
In retrospect BSG may well represent Ron Moore catching the "don't listen to anyone about anything" disease a few years later
Cosplay is awesome
Or, can be
OUR STAR BURNS
its when the O'Brein Bashir bromance got into full swing
and not just boring like early DS9
Code of Honor wtf
especially the really aggressively anti-transhumanist messages and appeals to nature that happened frequently in TNG
I agree, including himself.
The DVD commentary makes it clear that by the end even he didn't know what he was about to do next.
Everything from Star Trek VI onwards is the 1990's, give or take. No real existential threats, we bring families on board our ships and we were toying with whales.
Then the Borg comes and puts paid to all the little fictions they have.
So the Federation gets more militant. It starts small: Admiral McCarthy in the Drumhead riling up fears of the Romulans. But it gets worse. The late TNG/early DS9 attempts to placate the Cardassians so as not to deal with a security headache. Enterprise's sister ship the Odyssey has two fifths of her crew and a lot more weapons, and that's before the Jem Hadar destroy it and gives them even more to worry about.
Is it a coincidence that it's during TNG's later years that Riker's old CO is seeking the illegal cloaking device, or is it a drive to develop any edge to defend the Federation?
It is literally something that only works with hindsight, but it fits surprisingly well.
Keep talking about Star Trek, guys. Don't worry about me over here, I'm just watching.
And even with some of the dumb of the last two seasons it still was a great show and I think some of the issues was them falling into the, "holy shit it is still going?" mixed with "Bubble of no one saying no."
JMS with B5 is one of the few before the show was even shot had the major points and characters planned from start to finish and the last season is a mess because they thought they were canceled after season 4 so they sped up and compressed some of her stories.
This is actually one of my favorite recent examples of knowing EXACTLY WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN because I've seen this story before, and still being like
are
are you masturbating to Star Trek discussions
jack off "motions"
TNG was ahead of its time, so I remember it more fondly, but going back to watch TNG is kind of a dangerous nostalgia, since so many episodes end up being worse than one might remember.
I'd love some massive TV service to start a new Star Trek series and take it in a different direction than the enjoyable-but-empty Abrams films. If only there was some sort of massive streaming service that was expanding into creating television