the harsh realities of rewatching Next Generation

[urrutiap]

10 Harsh Realities Of Rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generation 29 Years Later (screenrant.com)

stupid writer at screenrant who probably never sat down and actually watched an episode of any Star trek show

10. the holodeck dangers being problematic
9 . Geordie and his creepy obsession with Leah Brahms
8. the Naked Now being a bad sequel to the original series. What does she mean by that exactly? How is it a "sequel"?

7. Angel One fails in critique of gender roles

6. Barclay and his holodeck fantasies
5. Dr Crusher's relationship with the family ghost being weird. ?
4. Civilian and casual clothes being laughable
3. the female characters got the worst storylines.
2. the episode structure hurt important character arcs
1. Code of Honor is racist. No duh, Rachel

 

[Unique]

Are you looking for point by point agree/disagree discussion, or what?

 

[Wingcommanderdarkwolf01]

 

[Takeru]

stupid writer at screenrant who probably never sat down and actually watched an episode of any Star trek show

Great start.

8. the Naked Now being a bad sequel to the original series. What does she mean by that exactly? How is it a "sequel"?

By having them encounter the same problem and literally referencing the events of The Naked Time, have you watched the episodes?

 

[at Quark's]

9, 8, 7, 6, 5, and 1 are just single-episode issues. (ok, 9 is perhaps a two-episode issue). Almost every long running series has laughably bad installments. And I think it's saying something that 6 out of the 10 complaints deal with issues found in a single episode only.

10,4,3,2 do recur in several episodes, yes.

10 - The holodeck was a great addition at first but gradually devolved into 'we can't thing of a good idea for this week, let's just have a holodeck malfunction', serving the story short-term but not thinking through the longer-term repercussions (much like the sheer amount of incidents at Hogwarts should have made every somewhat sensible parent think twice about sending their children there)
4 - It was the 80's. What'd you expect?
3 - A more serious issue, but once again, this show is 40 years old. Deanna was criminally underused ('captain I sense ...'), but they finally started using her in more serious roles towards the end of TNG.
2- True, but that was just the way shows were back at the time. There's still some character development. S1 Picard and Data are definitely not the same characters as S7 Picard and Data, for example.

 

[Herbert]

These articles are all clickbait nonsense. I would suggest not clicking on them. It's giving them exactly what they want when you do that. With the internet, any idiot can write something and throw it out there. I would venture to say that at least 90% of it is useless garbage.

 

[somebuddyX]

Some of it I agree with, some I don't. Yeah it's clickbait, but so what. People here have said the same stuff over the years. The holodeck manufacturers would have been sued into oblivion by the end of the show for all the stupid shit they allowed to happen. Crusher fucking that ghost was a dumb storyline, probably, I forget. "The Naked Now" is a piece of shit and not only a bad remake of a pretty beloved original series episode that looked kinda seriously into the character's psyches but also had the TNG characters cut loose before we really knew anything about them in the first place. TNG did often give the females crap storylines, including Tasha.
I will defend Geordi's story with Brahms because if all we saw on screen is what happened then he gave her a kiss at the end of the episode and that was it, and the following episode makes a point that Geordi's hologram was all a fantasy without any of the rough edges that really make up a person. Geordi's put off by real Leah but the computer sandpapered off all the rough bits to give him this sanitised version, and in the end he and real Leah still end up working together and finding mutual respect. I thought that was more honest about a lot relationships whether romantic or platonic where there is the idealised image of someone but it's based on something untrue and how you get past that for something more rewarding in the long run.
TNG had great continuity. Like seriously I watched Season 3 recently and the amount of callbacks between episode in that season alone was great.

 

[urrutiap]

writers like that Rachel from Screenrant and anyone young newbie writer at a movie and tv show website similar to screernrant, theyre a bit slow when finding out that an old sci fi show or any show has a few episodes that do get a little racist and sexist.

Us older fans are like this: Who gives a crap really. Yes we all know old Star Trek and even Next Generation was a bit rough in the early seasons. We had to deal with it and enjoy the rest of the show.

is that Code of Honor episode or whatever from Star Trek Next Generation "racist and sexist"? yes but who frikkin cares.

 

[herofhyrule]

Why don't you tell us what you really think?
From your other thread in GTD:
"if a guy wrote that article about the old Star Trek show, he wouldnt be pissing and moaning about how the show was being a little racist and sexist.

If you let a young woman write an article for an old sci fi show or any old from 50 years ago, you damn well know she would start brining up the whole misogny, sexist attitudes etc"
Is your issue really with the article or with the gender of the author?

 

[fireproof78]

yes but who frikkin cares.

Some of us "older fans" do. It's a poor showing on the part of a franchise that claims diversity as it's watch word.

If Trek desires to claim historical position of being welcoming of diversity, as well as wanting more fans to come in to the fold then the response can't be "Shrug...who cares? We didn't mind in the past and we don't care now." That's rude.

 

[herofhyrule]

Believe it or not, being racist and sexist was just as wrong then as it is now. Just because they were more prevalent didn't make them right.

 

[Oddish]

10. The holodeck should be hardwired to shut down when the safeties go offline. Everyone knows that. They don't do it.
9 . The Booby Trap bit where he wound up smooching the hologram was... understandable. Geordi had just been friendzoned hard, after all. But the "Galaxy's Child" bit was character assassination, pure and simple.
8. The Naked Now hit too soon. We need to really know these characters before we mess with them that way.
7. Angel One absolutely pisses on DS9's pathetic attempt to address gender equality.
6. Barclay should have just ordered all of his programs to end instantly whenever anyone else entered. I mean, that's the equivalent of your middle schooler stuffing his porno mag under the mattress when you knock at his bedroom door.
5. Anyone banging any ghost is weird.
4. The clothes are a little odd, but maybe they're super comfy.
3. The female characters got storylines? When?
2. This was before DS9 established proper character arcs. About the only arcs we saw were Riker kept refusing the captain's chair, Picard got messed up by the Borg, and Tasha Yar died.
1. Saying that CoH is racist is a bit like saying the sun produces heat and light: it's true, but it's also kind of obvious.

 

[fireproof78]

Geordie and his creepy obsession with Leah Brahms

This is so a problematic that the fan base still talks about it. It's creepy. Period.

Barclay should have just ordered all of his programs to end instantly whenever anyone else entered. I mean, that's the equivalent of your middle schooler stuffing his porno mag under the mattress when you knock at his bedroom door.

It was the 80s.

And privacy is no go in space future.

 

[The Wormhole]

is that Code of Honor episode or whatever from Star Trek Next Generation "racist and sexist"? yes but who frikkin cares.

Everyone. Most of the TNG cast consider Code of Honor to be the worst episode for exactly those reasons.

 

[urrutiap]

on any show there will always be an episode that ends up being a bit "racist" and/or sexist.

Deal with it. early Next Generation still had some of the original series in it when Next Generation started back then. Deal with it and watch the rest of the show since the show gets better.

Deal with it or else dont watch the show and go watch something else then for cripes sake

Everyone. Most of the TNG cast consider Code of Honor to be the worst episode for exactly those reasons.

 

[ReddishAlert]

I think the obsession over Geordie and Leah Brahams holodeck is so overstated and puritanical.

Some science fiction is allegorical and some is literal. The point of the story is that Geordie can form a relationship when he’s not consciously trying to be somebody he thinks women want but just be himself and that his real connection is to the ship itself. He doesn’t create the hologram to be creepy he creates it because he needs an equal mind to bounce ideas off of and the computer creates it. Then is carried away by the fantasy interaction. With a person who he has never met. Which in itself is a lot less creepy than the voyeurism of almost every Hollywood film. He kisses her in a moment of excitement then deactivates the program and, as far as I remember, doesn’t go back until she finds it accidentally.

At which point it is an old program. I hope Stevie Nicks never asks me about the poster I used to have of her up on my wall as a teenager ‍

At most it says he needs a better engineering team if he needs the holodeck for problem solving because all his real engineers are too goofy to keep up with him.

But also, it is just a true thing in life that people constantly fantasize things about other people.

Fantasize about yelling at their boss, about their crush being single suddenly, about the person they didn’t have the courage to approach, about a trip they will never take and on and on.

Most of these things are things people don’t act on. Because they realize their advances would be unwanted or they can’t actually quit their job or whatever.

It’s just a story about the parts of life we imagine and the parts which we really live and how easy it is to get swept up in a fantasy but how we nevertheless have to return to reality. What it is not, nor what it ever suggests to be, is an instructive lesson on creating holographic dates.

People need to let it go. Also, and this is neither here nor there, but the porn industry in the US alone generates something like $3k a second. I don’t even think that includes all this social media stuff everywhere now. How much of it is provoked by people’s unrealized sexual aspirations about movie stars or people they know? My guess would be a lot.

There is almost a constant objectification of women, over sexualizing of men and women, permissiveness and even expected violation of women’s space, privacy and personhood in the US. All of which are real and serious unresolved issues.

But to make the Leah Brahams episodes about that is to entirely miss the point of both the episodes as well as the real issues surrounding conditioned misogyny.

 

[Mudd]

on any show there will always be an episode that ends up being a bit "racist" and/or sexist.

Deal with it. early Next Generation still had some of the original series in it when Next Generation started back then. Deal with it and watch the rest of the show since the show gets better.

Deal with it or else dont watch the show and go watch something else then for cripes sake

How about you just settle down, there?

The second Leah Brahms episode is just awful, myopic male self-justification that makes Geordi look pathetic. Well, consider the source.

 

[urrutiap]

what Geordi did was harmless.

Barclay, he went overboard a little bit with his weird holodeck sex fantasy with Troi which he should have put a password lock on it. at the same time Barcley was socially shy not entirely his fault

It bothers me that anyone can go in a holodeck and can easily access someone else's private or personal holodeck program

 

[Gov Kodos]

what Geordi did was harmless.

And weird. He could have just talked to the computer instead since that's all the holodeck Leah is, the ship's computer.

Barclay, he went overboard a little bit with his weird holodeck sex fantasy with Troi which he should have put a password lock on it. at the same time Barcley was socially shy not entirely his fault

Creating sex dolls of your coworkers with the company's equipment is more than a little overboard.

It bothers me that anyone can go in a holodeck and can easily access someone else's private or personal holodeck program

The holodeck belongs to Star Fleet, tough.

Word of advice, be careful what you're using your job's computers for.

 

[Mudd]

what Geordi did was harmless.

What he continued to do was pathetic and the writer's POV was predictably ugly.