Season TWO OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Discussion Thread

[davejames]

Awesome news, can't wait for this to come out! Other than Q Who and Elementary Dear Data, I haven't seen most of these episodes in over 10 years, so I'm curious to see if they're any better or worse than I remember.

With Season One, I was surprised to find myself changing my opinion on quite a few episodes.

[Mutai Sho-Rin]

Trekker4747 wrote:

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Generalize much? Calm the fuck down.

<snip>

My advice to you is to mind your own business. This kind of comment can't do anyone any good and teeters on the edge of trolling. Don't do it again.

[M]

USS Intrepid wrote:

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Really looking forward to season 2. There are a quite a few of my favourites in there.

Well, ask me, it's my favorite season of TNG!

USS Intrepid wrote:

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I may actually be the only person looking forward to The Dauphin.

No, you definitely are not; I love "The Dauphin". Nice episode for Wesley.

[Trekker4747]

I find "The Dauphin" sort of weak since I find it hard to buy into Wesley's "aww shucks!" attitude over the girl. And the shape-changing-ness of the AOTW, particularly the "mother" is just hard to swallow and get into. It HAS been a while since I've seen the episode so my opinions could be different on a rewatch but watching Wesley crush on some average looking girl just isn't interesting.

[Jeyl]

Scotty wrote:

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I think Jeyl that your view on the women of Trek actually says more about you than it does about the show, the characters and the writers intentions.

Which is what?

And if you really want to see the intentions, just look up Maurice Hurley. This is the man who was responsible for getting Gates McFadden off the show (with some reports saying that he sexually harassed her), and re-wrote the Phase 2 story without ever reading the original script. I don't think it's a stretch to say that TNG didn't have the most well meaning writers onboard. All the writers who actually wanted to do something special with Star Trek had already left by season 2. Heck, DC Fontana had her NAME removed from "The Naked Now" because the episode was so poorly handled. And that was the first regular episode.

And the participants in the BluRay extra features are pretty open about this subject as well. Patrick Stewart talks about how he felt there was a bit of sexism going on in the show when it first started out and how DC Fontana originally wanted more female crew members for the Enterprise like the chief engineer. It's sad considering that both the head of security and the chief engineer are all replaced with the male members of the cast, and any potential female characters that are brought in (Like Season Two's Sonya Gomez) are just abandoned and forgotten. It's not until Gene wasn't in total control of the series and outside writers came in that we were able to get shows that not only gave us new prominent female characters, but also gave the female characters we already had something to do. Crusher took command of the Enterprise in Descent 1 & 2, Ensign Ro was a pretty big regular.

[davejames]

Yeah some of the women's roles were fairly weak early on, but I don't think it warrants THIS much anger and vitriol. Most of the characters in general weren't very well-written until Piller came along.

[Trekker4747]

Season 1/2 was rough overall and we all know by now what a colossal dick Maurice Hurley was but I don't think TNG's early seasons, or even as a whole, where as terribly sexist as you seem to suggest.

For example, in The Child once Troi decides to have the baby the issue on to abort or not is dropped. Which alone is showing a lot of support for women's rights and choices that abortion was even on the table! There's some initial concern over how the baby was conceived and what it meant but overall Troi's choices and motherhood isn't questioned in the least.

So how, exactly, was it "typical" of TNG/Trek's treatment of women? TNG even often showed women in positions of power and status. Picard's career in Pre-TNG history hung in the balance based on the actions of a woman. That's quite a long way from when in TOS it's pretty openly suggested women weren't allowed to command starships. S1's "Conspiracy" even has Picard admiring a woman who was able to achieve a commanding rank quicker than any other officer.

Yeah, occasionally we get the crap episode like the treatment of "Yar" in the widely maligned "Code of Honor" and we've discussed at great lengths the problems the series had behind the scened with Hurley.

But TNG was hardly using women as purely sex objects to appeal to male viewers which, really, was what they were used for in TOS and Voyager brought us with Seven of Nine's catsuit and Enterprise with T'Pol's catsuit. As DS9 wore on even Dax became more promiscuous and Leeta was pure eye candy.

So, aside from Troi's bunny outfit TNG was pretty damn even handed when it came to women because even though she was in a sexy costume atleast with Troi (being a counselor and possibly wanting to present a friendly appearance to her patients) added something to the stories and crew. Seven brought on an absurd uniform and a body full of Borg McGuffins.

T'Pol brought in the Braga-ian "emotionless woman in bunny suit", judgment of humans and someone to rub "decon goo" on.

But you've continually posted on episodes for the first two seasons like they were treating women as just pure pieces of worthless dirt. It wasn't great, sure, but it wasn't nearly as terrible as you're making it out to be.

[Jeyl]

davejames wrote:

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Yeah some of the women's roles were fairly weak early on, but I don't think it warrants THIS much anger and vitriol. Most of the characters in general weren't very well-written until Piller came along.

I'm not really that angry, I'm just disappointed. I certainly agree that every character got a lot of low points in the series, but from the perspective of the writers, you could tell they wanted to make the lead characters clever at the expense of other characters. The episode "Haven" for example when Tasha Yar recommends using phasers to disable the plague ship, and Picard calls her out on how stupid the idea is. From the writers perspective, they think they're making Picard out to be the smartest person in the room who thinks about more reasonable solutions. But instead of the final product doing that, it ends up proving your point in how both characters are so poorly written. Yar's suggestion of using phasers to disable, not destroy the ship is a reasonable solution, and not once does Picard bring up the idea of using the Tractor Beam to anyone.

[Jeyl]

Trekker4747 wrote:

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But you've continually posted on episodes for the first two seasons like they were treating women as just pure pieces of worthless dirt. It wasn't great, sure, but it wasn't nearly as terrible as you're making it out to be.

The reason why this strikes such a cord with me in TNG and not many other series is, well, the obvious. Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, was in complete control. The same man who preaches that in Star Trek, humanity is perfect, greed and hunger are a thing of the past and that we can accomplish anything. He'll approve an episode where Picard says we've eliminated greed and the need for possessions while at the same time using a contract to take half of Alexander Courage's royalties from the work he did on composing the original series theme. Some example he was.

[Warped9]

S1 TNG had a lot of sloppy writing and pretty much all the characters, male and female, came off poorly at some point or other. One can argue the writers didn't have a handle on the characters yet, but even so some of the things they had the characters say and do was just awful. I think the early TNG novels handled the characters better overall. Yar was handled particularly badly and it didn't help that Denise Crosby was lousy in the role and completely unconvincing in the part. Here it wasn't just poor writing but also bad casting.

S2 generally handled the characters better. Pulaski had some grit to her that Beverly Crusher lacked. Even when Crusher returned I never bought into her beyond the role of doctor although her performance improved immeasurably. Crusher in command of the ship was pure bullshit I never found convincing. Ditto with Troi.

TNG would eventually offer up some decent roles for women, but generally they were guest roles. The show didn't yet have the guts to feature a truly forceful female regular. It's sad in a way because by the late '80s we'd already seen a badass Elizabeth Ripley in the Alien films several years previously.

And note that only a few years later other genre shows started to do better than TNG with regular female characters. One of the very best was Dana Scully in The X-Files. I'd take her over any woman seen in contemporary Trek.

[BillJ]

Jeyl wrote:

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The episode "Haven" for example when Tasha Yar recommends using phasers to disable the plague ship, and Picard calls her out on how stupid the idea is.

You seem to forget Picard asking Worf if he plans on blasting a hole in the viewscreen when Q appears in Encounter at Farpoint. Or is it only okay to call out male officers when they do something stupid?

[davejames]

Jeyl wrote:

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The reason why this strikes such a cord with me in TNG and not many other series is, well, the obvious. Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, was in complete control. The same man who preaches that in Star Trek, humanity is perfect, greed and hunger are a thing of the past and that we can accomplish anything. He'll approve an episode where Picard says we've eliminated greed and the need for possessions while at the same time using a contract to take half of Alexander Courage's royalties from the work he did on composing the original series theme. Some example he was.

Well yeah, Roddenberry had his weaknesses was far from perfect, and the writing on TOS and TNG didn't always reflect his noble intentions. But I don't see how that invalidates the message of the show or anything.

These were still shows written by 20th century writers, after all, so it's only natural some of their antiquated ideas and attitudes were going to slip through. And they did still have to draw in male viewers, so of course there were going to be lots of pretty girls in sexy outfits.

It's still a TV show, after all.

[MikeS]

Trekker4747 wrote:

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Obviously in his rant Worf was talking about the main bridge, the central command center of the entire ship that is usually not connected to another duplicate right next door.

Well it made me chuckle.

Season 2. Looking through that list of episodes I think I've treated this season with some disrespect over the years by mainly ignoring it. There are some of Trek's best ever in amongst it - Measure Of A Man and Q Who and some thoroughly entertaining episodes in Elementary Dear Data, Contagion, A Matter Of Honour and Peak Performance. Throw the promised extra's in (especially the extended version of M of a M) and I am actually really looking forward to this.

[Jeyl]

davejames wrote:

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Well yeah, Roddenberry had his weaknesses was far from perfect, and the writing on TOS and TNG didn't always reflect his noble intentions. But I don't see how that invalidates the message of the show or anything.

I'm not saying it invalidates it, I'm just saying that even though he created Star trek, he wasn't good for it. Imagine if DC Fontana and David Gerrold were able to work on the show without Gene and his lawyer always butting in and telling them what to do and what not to do. Michael Piller always described this situation as "Gene's Box", where as long as you work under Gene, you have to abide by his rules of Star Trek. They basically amounted to "Humanity is perfect and there is no conflict. Now go create drama."

If Gene himself didn't care that much for Star Trek's message, why was he so darn insistent that this message be taken to the most serious degree with the other writers?

[Jeyl]

I'm a wee bit disappointed in the quality of the cover. The Enterprise looks way out of place.