I have.
I'm not kidding, when I was 12 in the early 70s, I used to go rollerstkating at the local roller rink and they would do the hokey pokey.
Robert
What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?
- Thread starter Amasov
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I have.
I'm not kidding, when I was 12 in the early 70s, I used to go rollerstkating at the local roller rink and they would do the hokey pokey.
Robert
I've got a doozy of one here. A defense for "Shades of Gray" (TNG). Not that I think it's a good episode, because it's not, but...
"Shades of Gray" came out during a time when not everyone had a VCR. According to this article, only half of American homes had VCRs in the late-1980s. I didn't have a VCR until 1990. At this point, TNG was not yet in strip-syndication, meaning it was only being shown once a week. There were no reruns being shown five days a week.
So if you don't have a VCR and you're only going to see a TNG episode once or twice, and that's all you can hope to see of them for a long time unless you have a friend with a VCR who's also a fan, you don't have the luxury of watching those episodes whenever you want.
"Shades of Gray" was a cost-cutting measure but it was also an episode that allowed people a chance to look back at episodes from the past two years who otherwise couldn't. Clip shows have no place in 2020, but in the '80s it was different.
"Shades of Gray" came out during a time when not everyone had a VCR. According to this article, only half of American homes had VCRs in the late-1980s. I didn't have a VCR until 1990. At this point, TNG was not yet in strip-syndication, meaning it was only being shown once a week. There were no reruns being shown five days a week.
So if you don't have a VCR and you're only going to see a TNG episode once or twice, and that's all you can hope to see of them for a long time unless you have a friend with a VCR who's also a fan, you don't have the luxury of watching those episodes whenever you want.
"Shades of Gray" was a cost-cutting measure but it was also an episode that allowed people a chance to look back at episodes from the past two years who otherwise couldn't. Clip shows have no place in 2020, but in the '80s it was different.
They did it in the 90's and early '00's, when I was still young enough to skate without risking injury.
That's the best explanation I've heard as to why clip shows were so prevalent in older shows and why you never see them on shows today. Recently I heard Bill Lawrence (the show runner of Spin City and Scrubs) say that back in broadcast tv era even a show's fans might only see something like 1 out of every 3 episodes on average, so people ended up missing a ton.
I grew up in those days, and it's true. I remember the mid 80's, and our family's first video player. It was a heady feeling, being able to repeat your favorite part of a show or movie as many times as you wanted. Ranks right up with my first Playstation, my first internet connection, and my first smartphone.
Clip Shows were still being done on SG1 and I think they came up with some real creative ways to make that happen. Inaugaration in 2004 was like an episode of The West Wing done in the stargateverse with none of the regular cast members and acted like a prelude to the season finale coming up. The year before they had the episode Disclosure where the Stargate project is revealed to a UN security council meeting.
I think by that point they were doing them because it was an old trope that had become a tradition on TV. They didn't remember the original reason they were done in the first place.
I think Stargate primarily used clip shows to save money late in the season.
Trek at least had the option to save money with bottle shows--that is shows set aboard the ship which use the standing sets and don't require new set construction nor any location shooting. In comparison it's much tougher for SG1 to set a show entirely on base and not go through the gate.
Wasn't 'Shades of Gray' more a product of the writers strike? Cost cutting too perhaps but season 2 had less episodes than others because of the strike?
It was that too. But I meant more why I think they did them on TV back then in general.
The only clipshows I have familiarity with are the Simpsons ones, and since reruns of the show were on 7 times a week (2 episodes each day) when I grew up it made the clipshows pretty redundant, since the episodes naturally cycled every couple months.
Friends and Frasier were also still doing clip shows in the late 90s. Just seems it was a "done thing" for American television shows (coincidentally, the A-Team season 2 finale was also a clip show).
I dont mind "Shades of Gray". Given the constraints it was fine. At least they came up with a sci-fi ish way for justifying the clips and avoided the whole "character x might be leaving so all the rest of the characters remember what a great guy he was and all the good times" cliche.
I dont mind "Shades of Gray". Given the constraints it was fine. At least they came up with a sci-fi ish way for justifying the clips and avoided the whole "character x might be leaving so all the rest of the characters remember what a great guy he was and all the good times" cliche.
Reboot the entire franchise from the ENT era, make Starfleet a military organisation, keep a currency based economy, make the humans more diverse, make the aliens more diverse, and have 'realistic' promotions and transfers.
Not to rub salt onto the proverbial wound, but TNG DID have better special effects than TOS.
Still, I found TNG better than TOS because of its stories AND SFX.
My 'controversial' opinion of Trek is that the 24th century Federation as seen on TNG, DS9 and VOY should have been portrayed as massively FAR more technologically advanced compared to what we actually saw given that technology and science evolve exponentially, and in a collection of societies like the Federation combining numerous technologically advanced species in cooperation, sharing, no money, etc. would propel science and technology forward to quite literally 'ridiculous' levels (but good ridiculous).
I like TNG better because of its stories, characters and (in my eyes) better looking production design.
Well part of this is probably because it's a 1980s version of an advanced future. That was a time when the scene where Data has the computer play multiple music files on top of each other was science fiction. And it's my impression that the creators themselves weren't exactly on the bleedign edge of technology, even for back then.
Another part is that it's difficult to have Dyson Spheres or floating habitats in the clouds of Gas Giants on a 1980s television budget.
But other than that I agree; two thigns that always stand out to me are:
1)With their "no money" society where everybody just runs around following their dreams and being the best they can be...they should have a lot more automation and work robots around doing manual labour. I'm not even talking androids, but completely non humanoid automatized machinations and "little robot guys" like in Star Wars. Come to think of it, Battle Robots should probably be a thing too.
2)Medical Technology and Transhumansim. Yeah yeah I know Roddenberry had this idea of "in the future we have accepted death" (but not if the ex-girl friend gets married, that's unacceptable)
But thing is, I don't think people would ever stop trying to find ways to cheat death and aging, so I think we should have countered more characters in 90s Trek (that aren't villains of the week) who have uploaded their minds into computers, or have become cyborgs. there's no reason not to work on immortality in a post-scarcity society that can settle as many planets as they can find.
There's only so much one can do with material and tech, it'll plateau and end eventually. Even in TNG they dip into this in...Relics? There are systems that Scotty can't really fanthom, but the most basic stuff is still more-or-less the same and even the shuttle Scotty is on is only around 60, 70 years old at that point and would still be in Starfleet service were it intact - as all a spaceship needs, really, is to have a spaceframe that isn't fatiqued or broken. Probably why we still see Mirandas and Excelsiors everywhere still, they're all made up of materials we would kill for and protected by systems we can't even comprehend and haven't been put much to strain in the effete era of the Federation.
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