The One Thing That Annoys Me About "Star Trek Next Generation"

But wasn't the shuttlebay secured against unauthorized excursions? Oh right...

 

Ahh it's good for expanding your mind! After awhile it doesn't give you a headache. Or maybe I was young enough to adapt to the Voyager technobabble that today i might not survive it...

 

I don't know if I've already said this but the one thing that bothers me...can it be two?

1. The title Next Generation. It sounds like a spin off from Saved by the Bell or something
2. Sirtis' acting. And I like Troi but I wonder if the only attribute was being attractive like a 'decorative potted palm the bridge' (her words not mine). But her acting is flat until season 7 and that's a bit too late. I really liked her in Dark Page with Majel

 

"Computer, release command control to this station. Authorization, Riker-Omega-Three. Okay, Morta. The Enterprise computer system is controlled by three primary main processing cores cross linked with a redundant melacortz ramistat and fourteen kiloquad interface modules. The core elements are based on FTL nanoprocessor units arranged into twenty-five bilateral kelilactirals with twenty of those units being slaved to the central heisenfram terminal…..you do know what a bilateral kelilactiral is, don't you?"

That type of dialogue didn't expand my mind; it damaged it.

 

tuche. I'd sweat and need an anti anxiety drug to have that dialog as an actor.

 

There's only so many times you can say "Captain, I sense..." with feeling. (No pun intended.) They didn't have much for her character to do, so nothing for the director to really coax out of her.

 

fair enough

 

At some point it did seem like it was standard procedure to have your counselor on the bridge with you when you're the captain of a ship.

 

I knew immediately which characters would be popular, but all the characters meant something to people. Representing women on the show, Crusher and Troi had their own legion of fans and of course lots of women thought of them as role models. Even if they weren't the best characters they were certainly good at their jobs, very professional and the writers gave them their fair share of spotlight episodes.

 

Your 'one thing' is the cast...so...you're OK with Sub-friggin-Rosa?

 

thats just crappy writing. Someone was asleep at the wheel...

 

One of the very rare instances in which the meaningless technobabble is actually (in-universe) supposed to be meaningless

 

Why is it then that it made more sense than usual?

 

Several times. That particular person who was asleep at the wheel (and by asleep I mean drunkenly swerving his ego into every bad idea imaginable) is my 'one thing'.

 

That's one piece of junk! nothing redeemable in it whatsoever.

 

The one thing that I really wish they did was show how these people were so great.

I don't have a problem with them being really good at their jobs: they'd better fucking be. This isn't a pack of rogues on the Millennium Falcon or Firefly or what have you (that really should have been blown out of space any number of times when you think about it -- the Imperial Navy got its reputation by conquering the galaxy; a pack of smartasses in an old piece of junk shouldn't be able to miraculously outfly and outwit them time and again).

These guys are explorers on a Federation capital ship (the flagship, if that's actually a thing in this context); what makes them so moral? How do they overcome their own demons, combat their own prejudices and vices and ambitions..."study evil without being studied by evil." I've always thought Starfleeters to be part warrior, part professional, part priest -- almost like a jedi. To be a truly good person, you can't just ignore your own evil (as it eventually catches up with you, and you can't have that being an issue when you're in command of a flying weapon of mass destruction), but instead be able to work through it and course-correct yourself to be the type of person you want and are expected to be.

If there's an indictment of Berman-era Starfleet superiority, for me, it isn't that they got along with each other, but that we didn't see them do the self-work to be able to do that. I adore the Observation Lounge meetings in which the crew figured out the best solution to a problem rather than just glassing the planet's surface; what I wanted to see was more of the Observation Lounge meeting, or the jedi mediation, they had with themselves.

 

My problem with Bev wasn't so much that she was bland, though I can see why someone might be bored by her episodes, dull writing that they were.

My issue has always been that she can be so damn sanctimonious. I swear, no one in the crew exploits their personal relationship with the captain more, to push their moral agenda, than her, downright insubordinantly so at times. I really do wish she'd gotten a humble pie episode like Riker got The Pegasus. Suspicions came close, but didn't really deliver

I still like the idea of a one-off guest spot by Pulaski, where they clash on medical treatments, the way she did in Ethics. It would be much more tense & ambiguous to have a doc with history & respect all up in her business. We'd still be arguing about it the way we do over Jellico v. Riker, & Bev's holier than thou posture could get knocked down a peg or two

 

Bev was often the one speaking up for the rights of those who weren't involved in Picard's decision-making. And right out of the gate, too - this was not a later addition to her character, or anything. In fact, I can tell you exactly when Bev won my heart: in the 1st Season episode "Symbiosis."

Bev wants to end the addiction of a people being manipulated by a planet of drug dealers. She wants to end their suffering painlessly, with the use of 24th Century medicine at her disposal. She fights passionately for their health and recovery, but Picard refuses. He instead preaches to her about ... The Prime Directive. His decision's been made and it's final. But Bev did her best to preserve and protect Life, like a good doctor should and I love her, for that.

And again, in the 1st Season, we see Data bringing aboard 3 frozen, dead bodies and ships them to Sickbay, where Bev brings them to Life. Not as reanimates, or zombies, or any such thing ... but back to LIFE! Whole and complete. That's how much Bev loves Life, she'll return it even unto the dead, if she can. I love that!

 

Right, & then in I Borg, she is willing to risk the safety of her ship & crew, & quite possibly the security of the entire UFP, because 1 Borg wasn't completely dead yet, despite the fact that she'd been ordered away, because she was more beholden to the Hippocratic Oath than her Starfleet one, & it wasn't the 1st time she leaps with her heart instead of her head. The whole Higher Ground Episode should've been a wake up call. She got treated with some big old kid gloves, often

 

Imagine if we all took the Hippocratic Oath, or did "what Jesus would do." Maybe Starfleet's oath isn't ambitious enough. Maybe if she were in command of the Enterprise, Q wouldn't have found her arrogant enough to introduce us to the Borg. Or if when the Borg came, we'd have half the galaxy bound to repelling it back from whence it came. ...romantic thoughts.