What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?

Yeah, you found my controversial opinion there!

With the caveat that I haven't watched it in a while, I'll address what I think is wrong with "The Big Goodbye."

First of all, the B-plot involving the Jarada was awful, not even funny, just absurd.

The A-story suffers from a clash of paradigms. Cyrus Redblock still behaves as a one-dimensional pulp caricature after the alien scan, so why is it that we or Picard should take McNary any more seriously? Why is it that we should give a shit whether he continues after the holodeck gets turned off? McNary is the one who speaks the titular term of "The Big Goodbye," so there is a dramatic need for us to identify with this holoprogram as a character.

There's a lotta potential there, but it just kinda fizzles, and it's ultimately a shallow excursion into the philosophical depths of what it means to be real. The missed potential in having lassoed a big idea only to let it get away from them, that's the shortcoming here, a shortcoming shared with "Where No One Has Gone Before."

On the other hand, VOY "Real Life" is an example of a very strong third or fourth+ generation holodeck episode that does not suffer from any of the shortcomings that "The Big Goodbye" suffers from as a holodeck episode. The explanation for what's going on in the holodeck is soundly established as due to B'Elanna's programming and not due to some random, inexplicable interaction with alien tech. We care for the characters because the Doctor is invested in them and because they are appealing and dynamic. Any skepticism or cynicism that we might have about their appeal is already baked into the premise under which they are presented originally as clichéd archetypes that B'Elanna has then tweaked. The loss of a child is consequential to the Doctor, therefore dramatic, and so consequential to us. The exploration of what it means to be real is in the contrast between the clichéd "lollipops" that make up the Doctor's family initially and the flawed, dynamic, messy, and mortal versions of them as they are after B'Elanna's tweaks. And for the cherry on top, "Real Life" has the virtue of subtly criticizing the characters of TNG-era Star Trek itself.

 

In one story.

I’d put forward David Banks with a clenched fist intoning “Excellent!” as an alternative.

 

Now I'm not really a Dr.Who Fan but I once caught the whole of the Dalek Invasion of Earth serial on TV. And that whole story was bleak and terrifying as all hell.
And a big part of that was how relentless and merciless the Daleks were and how hopeless that made the whole situation for the remaining humans.

 

Multiple stories if you include the expanded universe.

I'm one of those people who believes that the classic series had no good Cybermen stories after the 1960s; Banks's highly emotional portrayal of a supposedly emotionless being is a large part of that

Though I suppose I could have also gone with "you will be assimilated become like us" or variations thereof, which does appear in multiple episodes. And of course the Cybermen said "resistance is futile useless" multiple times too...

 

It's always fun to see family members get slipped in that way. I'll bet a lot of cast and crew's families got that chance.

My only issue with "Real Life" is that after all that the Doc went through, his holo-family just disappeared after that. Voyager's love for the Big Red Reset Button saw to that.

 

...

You did specify the classic series?

I think... and then I'm getting off Doctor Who 'cause it's a Trek board, that the only good Cybermen stories in the Classic series are The Tenth Planet and The Invasion.

Even post-2005 Doctor Who struggles to make anything of them.

Great concept, much too often squandered.

 

All the more reason to include her.

 

I guess it's a matter of personal perspective.

Between a choice of getting killed in a fight against a Dalek or getting sliced open and have everything that makes me who I am taken away and walking around forever like that... I far prefer death. What the Cybermen do to you... that's a living hell. Either classic version or current series of Cybermen.

For me, far more terrifying that getting exterminated by a Dalek laser beam.

 

Fair enough, but in that version I mentioned they also made "robot men" from humans, which turned into mind controlled automatons. But like, not completely apparently, since the whole story starts 2ith one of those robot men labouring to drown himself in the Thames.
So with the Daleks you might get both. I fact because of that I thought for the longest time that Dalek and Cybermen were the same, just like that the Daleks were the leaders of the Cybermen or something. Haha.

 

Classic series expanded universe

You forgot "Tomb of the Cybermen"

I'd say especially post-2005 Doctor Who. They had every opportunity and the budget to back it up, and totally squandered it. When even Neil Gaiman can't do anything with them you know they've got conceptual issues – "Nightmare in Silver" must be the worst thing he's written in over twenty years. And honestly (and to link this back to Star Trek) I think the Borg might have something to do with that, because they rather stole the Cybermen's thunder in the "body horror" and "dehumanising" aspects, since they ran with those concepts to their logical conclusion; now there's nowhere interesting for the Cybermen to go with those now that won't leave the general viewing public, the not-we, thinking that they're knock-off Borg.

 

I did not. Quite aside from the fact that the Cybermen’s plan makes no sense at all, the story itself comes over as a racist piece of crap. It’s very stylish with a few iconic moments but I can’t stand it as a whole.

Maybe we should take this to DM?

 

That is *not* a controversial opinion

 

That's not a haircut. That's a stairway to other galaxies.

 

"Move Along Home" is one of the weaker Season 1 episodes of Deep Dish Nine, but...it isn't "godawful beyond the pale" bad.