Star Trekkin': From TOS To ENT

[ijustworkhere]

I didn't realize Nemesis was unpopular! I really liked it. It ranks as one of my fave Star Trek movies. Then again, I also really like Generations, which has apparently been deemed craptastic as well, so maybe it's just a product of the fact that I grew up going to see those movies in the theater.

I wasn't too young to know that Insurrection was a big steamy pile of doodoo, though. What a terrible film. I'll watch it occasionally just for the Riker/Troi nookie and the joke about Data's bottom. Oh, and the scene with Geordi watching the sunset, which legitimately chokes me up.

My big problem with TNG is that the ladies never had enough to do. Troi was always useless beyond measure and Crusher only got to be cool a few times (I love the episode where she has to be captain for a little while). As far as my favorite episodes go, usually the Data ones are the best, or the ones with some freaky twist. The one with Data's dreams, the one where Data turns into the freaky sun god, and the one where no one can sleep and Troi floats through that green mist gave me HIDEOUS nightmares as a child. Shudder. Trek could be really disturbing when it wanted to! Troi as a cake? Gah!

[tabby]

I've been a Trekkie since the original series started, back in 1966. I was in second grade and promptly fell in love with Mr. Spock.

TNG and DS9 are my favorites of the series, though. In TNG, I love the Q episodes, mainly because I love the interaction between Q and Picard. Patrick Stewart and John de Lancie were wonderful playing off each other. Likewise, I adore the Lwaxana Troi episodes, because watching Picard get completely bamfoozled by Lwaxana was hilarious. (RIP, Majel.)

DS9 wasn't popular with a lot of Trek fans I knew, because it tended to be so dark. But I loved the shades of gray and the characterizations. And they did have some funny episodes that I enjoyed a lot, like Trials and Tribble-ations (my favorite of TOS was always The Trouble With Tribbles) and Take Me Out to the Holosuite, wherein Sisko teaches the DS9 gang to play baseball. The part where they're sitting around trying to figure out the infield fly rule is comedy gold.

[Mutagen]

With regards to comedy and DS9, I thought it tended to be either really good or really bad. Trials and Tribble-ations WAS really good and absolutely chock-full of in-jokes. And not just Trek in-jokes, because I remember reading that the names of the two "time anomaly investigators" who came to investigate Sisko & Co.'s time travel shenanigans were anagrams of Mulder and Scully.

The bad DS9 comedy episodes, though, surely rank with the most unpleasant experiences in Trekdom. I would rather watch a five-day marathon of Insurrection than the "Quark undercover as a Ferengi female" episode. Ewww.

Regarding Jonathan Frakes, he seems like a pretty nice guy off-screen. And he directed "First Contact," so I'll always love him for that (supposedly he was known as "Two Takes Frakes" because of how efficiently the film shoot ran, which is cool). But dang, Riker always seemed like kind of a tool to me.

On the topic of Trek comedy, have y'all seen the Futurama episode Where No Fan Has Gone Before? Nearly all of the surviving TOS cast re-unites to play their own voices (except James Doohan, who was very ill at the time). Walter Koenig is funny as hell.

[kateln]

I'm a weirdo because the only show I liked (I'm a super-picky SciFi fan) is The Next Generation. Probably because Patrick Stewart was so awesome on that show.

Honestly, I think the first few seasons of the show are hilariously campy. It's not nearly as good as it was in later seasons, but still a lot of fun to watch. Plus my friends and I would watch the reruns in highschool and mock Wesley Crusher.

I never could get into the other series though.

[Ripley]

I was never a big Trekkie, but I did like TNG. I wanted to like Voyager, I really did, but I hated Kate Mulgrew's speaking voice.

[kostgard]

Jan 8, 2009 14:42:33 GMT -4 kateln said:

I'm a weirdo because the only show I liked (I'm a super-picky SciFi fan) is The Next Generation. Probably because Patrick Stewart was so awesome on that show.

Honestly, I think the first few seasons of the show are hilariously campy. It's not nearly as good as it was in later seasons, but still a lot of fun to watch. Plus my friends and I would watch the reruns in highschool and mock Wesley Crusher.

I never could get into the other series though.

I'm exactly the same way. Loved TNG, mostly because Patrick Stewart is rad, and never really bothered to watch any other version.

And yes, some of it is so unbelievable dated and cheesy. The first two seasons were pretty awful (that beard, no beard thing sounds like a good rule), the terrible one-piece uniforms were god awful and just looked like they gave everyone wedgies, and it is pretty hilarious that everyone was so late 80s PC about everything.

But one of the later season (I think) gave us one of the worst things I've seen on TV ever!

Remember that episode where they went to like, Planet Scotland for Crusher's grandmother's funeral, and Crusher meets this "ghost" who lives in her grandmother's house in a candle or some such crap? And the "ghost" (actually some sort of "energy being", I think) would sometimes materialize as a mist and Crusher totally had sex with it? After she learned that the mist was also donking her grandmother? And she was going to leave the Enterprise so she could stay on Planet Scotland so she could get donked by the mist and during one session Picard totally walked in on them?

God, that was really, really awful.

Actually, agonybooth.com has a great section called The Worst of Trek where you can read hilarious recaps of the occasional turds this franchise has served up.

[Mutagen]

kostgard, I missed that episode. That is hilarious. Is it better or worse than the "Deanna hallucinates she's boinking Worf, goes ballistic when she suspects Worf of boinking Ensign Homewrecker, and flings herself into the warp core" episode?

Actually despite my rambling about DS9, I love TNG as well. TNG got me at a very young age, when I still had warm fuzzy feelings about LeVar Burton from Reading Rainbow (giving my age away here). Even the older, cheesier episodes are still pretty enjoyable to me, like comfort food. I really liked "Silicon Avatar," when the scientist lady has her revenge on the crystal entity that destroyed Data's home planet.

Edit: Wow, the Agony Booth is blocked at my work! But I remember reading their recap of... something terrible on Trek, and it was utterly hilarious. It might have been the "Paris and Janeway go to Warp 10, evolve into salamanders and mate with each other" episode of Voyager.

[kostgard]

kostgard, I missed that episode. That is hilarious. Is it better or worse than the "Deanna hallucinates she's boinking Worf, goes ballistic when she suspects Worf of boinking Ensign Homewrecker, and flings herself into the warp core" episode?

Oh, it is a million times worse. Because you get scenes of Crusher sitting in a chair giving her O face while doing the do with a CGI mist. It really made me feel sorry for the actress.

There are also people on Planet Scotland with the worst fake Scottish accents ever.

That episode is covered by the Agony Booth if you want to check it out at home.

ETA: As far as movies go, I've mostly just seen the TNG ones. I've seen some of the TOS ones, but it was when I was a kid and I hardly remember them.

But I do think that First Contact is my favorite movie, but a lot of that is because the Vulcans are my favorite Trek aliens and I thought it was cool that they were the ones who made "first contact" with us.

[tabby]

That episode is covered by the Agony Booth if you want to check it out at home.

I think Keckler also did a recap of it as a TWoP Mondo Extra. I know she did a recap of the infamous Salamander Sex episode of Voyager.

[Deleted]

The beard/no beard rule for TNG is a good one. I also really did not like the lady playing Tasha Yar, and was thrilled when she was murdered by some black goo. She was better when she returned in Yesterday's Enterprise, and when she played the Vulcan daughter of that Tasha, but still, good riddance. (Her relationship with Data was also a turn-off for me).

And LOL! @ the Planet Scotland ep! I remember that so well. It was pretty hideous.

One of my other fave eps was when all these people at Star Fleet were taken over by the creepy-crawlie bugs, and it ended with one of them being shot to smithereens. Aaa, good times. Also anything with Worf in a cowboy hat.