I am watching DS9 for the first time (some observations)

The utopian version of humanity isn't specific to TNG, DS9 and VOY had it too. ENT moved away from that, but still had humanity eliminating war and disease in two generations. If you want a realistic version of future humans you have to go outside of the Trek franchise to something like Ron Moore's BSG, or The Expanse. The whole concept of a Federation of Planets is pretty utopian and TOS had it.

 

There's a difference between utopian and optimistic. TOS wasn't utopian at all. TNG changed that - and it's not even the idea of utopia that doesn't work for me but the execution of it. TNG's utopia doesn't feel utopian, it feels smallminded and restrictive and judgemental for no good reason beyond 'this is what some 80s tv writers thought utopia should be like'. This is a big part of why I like DS9 because it rolls with the world-building of TNG while also reinjecting some more TOS style humanity into its characters and making a real effort to question how much of 'utopia' is really utopian and how much is just the arbitrary cultural expectations of Starfleet/the Federation. Voyager mainly gets a pass on all this thanks to not having many real opportunities to examine the Federation setting anyway - a single ship by itself is just a unique entity, not a statement about the world at large.

 

Depends...

The f/x... these hold up fairly well, especially given they're model-based and not always CGI. Voyager's CGI may have been new at the time but sticks out now. DS9 could make paper airplanes moving along on fishing wires work but its strong visuals complement strong storylines that much more.

The storylines... DS9 hasn't held up - it's even futureproofed thanks to strong storylines, as well as melding ideas from TOS into the TNG timeline and showing there's more to the shiny happy Enterprise going on, of which they by and large nailed it. TNG's idealism is like a teddy bear, but DS9 is simply more compelling with its range of characters and storylines. And costumes, no Trek show ever looked so great in the sartorial department. VOY feels like a continuation of TNG, just after the TNG seasons 5-7 slump. I never really got into ENT and what I saw were probably good reasons why (sorry, not much into prequels, regardless of century...) TNG has dated in some ways, took a chance on how human mannerisms might evolve in 400 years and be more formal and Vulcan-like (which makes sense given the Vulcans' history with Earth), but the writing is crisp enough that a lot of it still works, especially seasons 2-4. Season 1 is still late-80s cheeseball and for all the complaining about today's shows being preachy and all that, try sitting through seasons 5-7. It's just as nails-on-chalkboard and brash. TOS - this goes into two categories: (1) the fact the 1960s were weird helps save the day when continuing goofy far-out ideas in space just did not work in later decades. Like space whales and incorporeal ball of light things. Then there's (2) where the attempts to get beyond sexism fails. TOS is in the 23rd century and multiple times we're told if not shown these things aren't issues. Yet women still leave the service to raise a family (no stay at home fathers?) or lines of dialogue that are casually sexist, even uttered by Spock on occasion (e.g. Amok Time, a few others). I cannot include "Turnabout Intruder" since it can't make up its mind if Lester is insane or if there's a legitimate issue implied. Probably the latter given circumstantial evidence but correlation is not always causation. Thankfully "Wolf in the Fold", an otherwise strong story, flagrantly uses sexism to gaudily and forcibly to make a plot point* - to the point that one can count it twice, thus making up for the series finale.

* Scotty hits his head on a wall or something because the crewmember causing him to bump his head is female therefore Scotty now has resentment and hatred of all women, which even Dr McCoy hamfistedly shoehorns into the plot. In the very same scene that Scotty is drooling over all the women and how he's going to enjoy it on Argelius but at least his total resentment will be gone because he's had a few (and I don't mean "beers"). ​

The acting... acting styles have changed over the decades as well. TOS was a product of its time, TNG shows a paradigm shift between "televised play" and "natural drama". The former may be dated, but it's not unwatchable just because it's televised play and doesn't feel like the real world. Being televised fiction set in the future, I wouldn't want it to mimic modern day water cooler lingo anyway.

Immersion helps, as well as reading up on the times (especially the 1960s), to understand the original perspectives and limitations of the era. Even, then rare episodes like "Charlie X" still hold up without needing to go that far since awkward teenagers are inevitable as potholes in April, mosquitoes in July, kids wanting to load up on sugar and get diabetes on the final day of October, and so on. I would almost recommend doing the opposite for TNG, given how many people had to get Roddenberry away from certain notions, like the one involving Troi and her having three-- so considering how crass "Justice"'s final rewrite was, that still can't hold a candle compared to some pre-production ideas that were not carried into the show, thankfully...

 

"Symbiosis" being the drug episode. Not a bad episode, even if it's (very) clunky.

Or the season 1 episode where the male crewman checks out Wesley, sometimes dialogue isn't needed to demonstrate a point. The problem with Trills as an analogue to allegory is simply that a direct parallel is simply impossible to do because nobody of any orientation is being driven by a parasite swimming in their innards. "Encounter at Farpoint" does the allegory a lot better and all Picard had to do was say "if we're going to be damned for what we are".

Putting that to the side, sexual attraction is also a unique experience to an individual. Not everybody is attracted to everybody else in the first place. It's too easy to claim homophobia where none directly existed or was intentional because the writer was focused on the Trill middleslug. What's supposed to happen anyway, do it under duress despite the lack of attraction? Isn't that akin to rape or something? Then again, Crusher in ST8-Insurrection states she's happy she's firmed up even though such a thing was no longer deemed an issue (see kids, this is why continuity is underrated and even can become important... Of course, we can play fanon headcanon in that because of her Trill experience that she sat there and learned something new and moved forward. Maybe she called him up and there's an offscreen romance worthy of a dozen novels just waiting to be penned? There. Problem solved. If the books are published.)

TNG did postulate a refined future for humanity, at least under the guise of Roddenberry and the crew acted as such. But it's not much different with TOS; the crew don't act like 20th century people chucked into the future as if nothing changed. They are acting different and reflect on the past, and without the arrogance "The Neutral Zone" carried (yikes and gadzooks, the irony is heavier than a neutron star), but there's still a vision there in play. But comparing humans 400 years ago to now, there are big difference. Will humans 400 years ago be like Picard and crew or something else? Even regress, perhaps? Nobody knows.

 

This is kinda ridiculous.I don't think we were talking about being visually dated. I think we're talking about acting styles and interpretations and culture. TOS is very much a 60's TV program... at it's core it always followed the 60's formula.

A lot of things could have gone wrong with Voyager if they played it differently. I didn't want the show to be about perpetual conflict with the the Maquis crewmen. Seven would have never worked if her loyalties remained with the Borg throughout the series, or Paris's loyalties were never stable. I just liked the crew-based science fiction stories. I liked the version and vision of the future of humanity..

The strange thing... when I look for new science fiction to watch, I never find something I really like. Because in the end, it's not Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek. In the sci-fi movies and series I watch, there is rarely anything to hope for, and the story is rarely just about exploration and possibilities.

 

I honestly hate Symbiosis. The fact that Picard spends literally the entire episode interfering in things only to pull a sanctimonious Prime Directive speech out of his butt at the last minute and that the writers expected me to find this 'clever' somehow is just pathetic. Watching Dr. Crusher take like half the episode to confirm what was painfully obvious about the disease from the second or third scene is painful. And that bit in the middle with Wesley is not only preachy, it's completely out of character for everyone in the scene and it has literally nothing whatsoever to do with the rest of the episode, beyond simply telling all the kiddies at home that they should just say no to drugs.

I thought we were talking about all different kinds of 'dated', and in most conversations I've seen the visual kind comes up first.

But, true, I forgot to mention the acting. TOS is definitely a different style of presentation/acting and one has to accept that to be able to enjoy it, so it is definitely dated in that sense. TNG also has a bit of that, imo, which is becoming clearer the farther away from it we get, but TOS is definitely the most dated in that respect. As is only to be expected considering the age difference.

I don't think that's really what anyone would've wanted it to be. You're just exchanging one unrealistically static status quo for a darker, grittier unrealistically static status quo. What Voyager should've been was flexible and full of long-term change. The maquis problem should've been harder to solve, but it definitely needed to be solved in the end. There just should've also been other problems and other pressures to take its place.

Seven's arc is probably the best example there is of what Voyager did right because of how much she changes the show, how much she is changed and changes the people around her, and yet none of it happens instantaneously or easily. She should have eventually been given a rank and uniform, but thats the only quibble I have with that part of the show.

Always dangerous making recommendations to strangers, but it sounds like you might enjoy the new Lost in Space.

 

There are so many things wrong with this episode, not the least of which is the application of the Prime Directive after aggressively interfering. However, I am driven mad by the blatant misinformation about the medical condition conducted/conspired by the Enterprise crew, which would constitute a crime today.

 

Voyager didn't solve the Maquis problem at all. They just ignored it. If they didn't have in mind a way to resolve the Maquis problem, they should have had it be just a Starfleet ship that got stuck in the Delta Quadrant.

 

Don't forget to weigh in on who your favorite Weyoun is, after you finish! (It won't be long, you will probably binge a couple seasons a month.. it's a very, very good show.)

 

I am way behind on this show. I'm still in Season 2 and I started in May.

 

TOS is definitely dated, inasmuch as it reflects looking forward from the perspective of the 1960s, as TNG looks forward from the 1980s. Neither look is completely divorced from the era in which each one was produced, TOS with its bright colors and TNG with its' pastels. I love TOS, but the older I get, the less futuristic it seems.

In this way, DS9 probably looks the best since it's meant to reflect the design aesthetic of a different culture. ENT, by default, seems the most modern but it's been a really long time since I've watched it.

 

Once you get past the judgmentalism that was toned down after the first season, to be the biggest way either of the shows are dated is the role of women. In a way TNG was worse in that regard because even though women were stronger than in TOS they were farther behind the curve for their time.

DS9 was really the first Trek to do women right with Kira.

I don’t have a problem with the ending of Symbiosis. The rest of the episode, sure, it’s clunky and preachy as hell. But the ending is just Picard realizing, hey we thought we were being good Samaritans and we messed up not researching it enough first, and now I’m invoking the PD as a legal out not to make it worse.

 

Except it doesn't even make sense from that pov. Those people have a right to know the truth about their addiction whether Picard thinks it might make something worse or not. It's like refusing to tell someone they have cancer because it might upset people.

 

Well, I think that goes back to whether the PD applies whether or not we like the results.

 

Except it would still apply from the start of the episode, meaning Picard ignored it until it things got inconvenient and invoked it after the fact as an easy way out. Nothing changed about the situation when he uncovered this information.

 

OK, I FINALLY finished "Rivals".

Chris Sarandon is great as Martus Mazur; he's more overtly charming than Quark, and yet, somehow sleazier. Getting the betting machine off a dead alien while also conning a widow on the side, while also putting the moves on another woman seems like something even Quark would be reluctant to do. Martus never ventures into being truly dangerous, but it's satisfying not only to see it all fall apart, but to find the conman himself getting conned.

The racquetball subplot doesn't really get paid off other than to illustrate the bizarre effect of Martus' gambling machines on the station. That said, it is used nicely to further establish elements of O'Brien's and Bashir's respective personalities. O'Brien can't help but see Bashir as a cocky upstart, whereas Bashir just seems happy to have someone to play with.

The probability conceit is a little silly, but I think it's wise that they don't try to explain it. It's enough that the machines have some kind of effect; any attempt to explain would just be hokey.

...

I'm going to try getting back to this on a regular basis; I have begun watching "The Alternate". I'll be posting about it shortly.

 

I almost feel "The Alternate" is more interesting for what it sets up in later episodes than due to anything within the episode itself, but it's been awhile since I've seen it.

 

Watched "The Alternate" last night. We get another episode built around a conceit that doesn't quite pay off but is saved by its' character moments.

Dr. Mora Pol clearly loves Odo, in a paternal manner, even as Odo is reluctant to reciprocate. He clearly doesn't think of himself (at this point, at least) as Mora's son. Still, Mora's influence on Odo cannot be denied, even down to having the same hairstyle; I appreciate that the show never has any of the characters overtly acknowledge this, trusting the audience to make the obvious conclusion. Considering how Odo struggles to fit in and compensates by being aloof and curt, it's an interesting contrast that Dr. Mora comes across as warmer and more personable.

The idea of Odo being affected by the volcanic gas is interesting inasmuch as we see the unique ways Odo's physiology is vulnerable. However, the way the characters suggest the Monster Form isn't really Odo sort of feels like a weak attempt to make sure Odo doesn't come across as a bad guy. It would've more satisfactory (and more believeable) to simply say that Odo isn't in control of his faculties, especially as they don't fully understand how Odo was being affected.

Still, it was good to get another episode fleshing one of the show's key supporting players.

On to "Armageddon Game".

 

Odo states it explicitly in The Forsaken.

 

I won't lie, I completely forgot that happened. What I appreciated is that the show doesn't stop to acknowledge it in the midst of the episode itself.