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Ok, just to be clear, was it implied that literal orgies were happening in "Naked Now" or am I being malicious?!?

Qonundrum said:
There's one scene that all but shows man-bits, which was daring in 1987 - albeit superficially as the story feels too much a retread of "The Naked Now" but only to make it EDGEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEY! It's really more LAUGHABLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLY BAAAAAAD! A missed opportunity for sure, but could the 80s handle the level of depth and maturity in "The Naked Time"?
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It's really not valid to judge TNG as a representative of '80s SFTV, because it was enormously smarter and better than most '80s SF shows. People today scorn TNG season 1, and it is deeply flawed, but the reason the show was a huge success despite its flaws is that almost everything else in SFTV in that decade was much, much stupider and more crudely made. Aside from rare exceptions like the Twilight Zone remake, Starman, and Max Headroom, 1980s American SFTV was mostly schlock, or at least lightweight stuff meant for family viewing. Even the first two seasons of TNG were exceptionally intelligent and sophisticated compared to their contemporaries. We just don't remember it today because SFTV in general started getting smarter in TNG's wake. I consider the pivotal year to be 1989, which was the year Michael Piller joined TNG and turned it from a good show into a great show, as well as the year we got Alien Nation and Quantum Leap.


Qonundrum said:
Probably, in the 24th century, all diseases have perfect cures too.
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Well, TNG season 1 did claim that headaches and the common cold were long-forgotten ailments. Although not every condition could be cured, since Geordi needed a painful prosthetic to compensate for his blindness.



Tallguy said:
"It's a choice." I think that Picard really wants hair but feels societal pressure to "be more advanced" and "not care about that sort of thing" so he doesn't avail himself of Shatnerol Hair Restorer.
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I don't see why Picard would want hair. Patrick Stewart didn't need hair to be seen as a sex symbol by TNG's female audience. The producers thought it was Riker who'd be the sex symbol, not the middle-aged bald guy, but they misunderstood what women were really attracted to.
 
Skipper said:
I don't know. I mean, if you mean level of explicitness, yes I totally agree. But usually the sex on Game of Thrones is, well, sad. I mean, even when it's consensual sex, the image that comes back is always a little sad. Bleak. Voyeuristic.

At least Roddenberry had a sunny and cheerful vision of sex. When the characters talk about sex they are always cheerful and smiling. It is presented as something pleasant. In GoT instead it seems that the characters wait for the time to have sex with a sense of dreadful inevitability.
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That's fair. I guess what I mean is the pervasiveness of sex in the stories more than anything else, not the attitude that comes with it. And, yes, the level of explicitness.
 
Christopher said:
Right, because everything in "Rascals" is highly intelligent and sensible...
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There have been other indications that Jean Luc-Picard is not as high minded about his baldness as the 24th Century (and you) would say that he should be. I'm just saying that perhaps him acting on that impulse would be seen as unnecessary and even inappropriate vanity.

Certainly the Picard from Encounter at Farpoint and The Neutral Zone would look down on everybody, er, I mean, such feelings.

CoveTom said:
That's fair. I guess what I mean is the pervasiveness of sex in the stories more than anything else, not the attitude that comes with it. And, yes, the level of explicitness.
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Even in 1987 it was seen as a bit of a flex. Pushing boundaries just to show this wasn't the stuffy 1960's of network television. Sock it to me, indeed.
 
Tallguy said:
There have been other indications that Jean Luc-Picard is not as high minded about his baldness as the 24th Century (and you) would say that he should be.
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Some writers or directors (or Stewart) slipped that through a couple of times, but I don't think it fits the overall intent of the series. There were plenty of times that people asked the producers why Picard didn't use futuristic technology or medicine to regrow his hair, and the answer was always that 24th-century men had outgrown such foolish vanity.
 
Christopher said:
Some writers or directors (or Stewart) slipped that through a couple of times, but I don't think it fits the overall intent of the series. There were plenty of times that people asked the producers why Picard didn't use futuristic technology or medicine to regrow his hair, and the answer was always that 24th-century men had outgrown such foolish vanity.
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That would be "Stuff that people talked about" vs. "what ended up on screen".

The way Sisko handled the death of his wife didn't track with the way Roddenberry said 24th century humans had evolved at all.
 
Tallguy said:
That would be "Stuff that people talked about" vs. "what ended up on screen".

The way Sisko handled the death of his wife didn't track with the way Roddenberry said 24th century humans had evolved at all.
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I'm not endorsing Roddenberry's rosy "no conflict" policy, but people getting over society's petty insecurity about hair loss is hardly on the same level. I mean, come on, my point is that Patrick Stewart becoming a major sex symbol should prove in and of itself how ridiculous it is for men to be afraid that losing their hair will make them unattractive. We should've outgrown that attitude by today, let alone the 24th century.
 
Tallguy said:
That would be "Stuff that people talked about" vs. "what ended up on screen".

The way Sisko handled the death of his wife didn't track with the way Roddenberry said 24th century humans had evolved at all.
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A lot of DS9, despite being thoughtful in approach and execution, definitely ran counter to Roddenberry's idealism and idealogue-infused approach. Then again, comparing proto-Vulcans that TNG humans were versus TOS, as much as I love TNG, TOS (and subsequently DS9) are easier to associate with for their being human. TNG definitely did the near-impossible and made the conflict-free emotionless future-humans palatable, but DS9 always felt like it had more in common with TOS than TNG...
 
Qonundrum said:
A lot of DS9, despite being thoughtful in approach and execution, definitely ran counter to Roddenberry's idealism and idealogue-infused approach.
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No, I think it was just more honest about the fact that living up to utopian ideals is hard work and requires eternal vigilance. TNG acknowledged that too from time to time, in episodes like "The Drumhead."

The Roddenberry of TOS understood that ideals are something we have to work to maintain: "We're killers, but we're not going to kill today." By TNG, his health and mental clarity were failing and he'd become too much a believer in his own image as a visionary philosopher.

Still, people exaggerate when they say Roddenberry insisted on no conflict in TNG. The rule as I understand it was actually "no petty conflict" -- nothing arising simply from people being emotionally dysfunctional or immature or mean-spirited or assuming the worst of each other, the usual sitcom or soap opera formulas. I've seen TNG writers say this was a good thing in a way, because it forced them to avoid the lazy shortcuts for generating conflict that writers too often fall back on, and challenged them to come up with conflicts that were actually meaningful, that could arise between well-adjusted people who respected each other but who had fundamentally different priorities or came down on different sides of a complex issue with no easy answers.
 
It's pretty clear in 24th century Star Trek all sexual taboos are gone. All remaining taboos are based on something rational, not centuries old moral judgments.
 
JirinPanthosa said:
It's pretty clear in 24th century Star Trek all sexual taboos are gone. All remaining taboos are based on something rational, not centuries old moral judgments.
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Definitely not all. Remember "The Host"? Or, and I feel gross brining this up cos it's revolting, "Rascals"
 
Christopher said:
It's really not valid to judge TNG as a representative of '80s SFTV, because it was enormously smarter and better than most '80s SF shows. People today scorn TNG season 1, and it is deeply flawed, but the reason the show was a huge success despite its flaws is that almost everything else in SFTV in that decade was much, much stupider and more crudely made. Aside from rare exceptions like the Twilight Zone remake, Starman, and Max Headroom, 1980s American SFTV was mostly schlock, or at least lightweight stuff meant for family viewing. Even the first two seasons of TNG were exceptionally intelligent and sophisticated compared to their contemporaries. We just don't remember it today because SFTV in general started getting smarter in TNG's wake. I consider the pivotal year to be 1989, which was the year Michael Piller joined TNG and turned it from a good show into a great show, as well as the year we got Alien Nation and Quantum Leap.




Well, TNG season 1 did claim that headaches and the common cold were long-forgotten ailments. Although not every condition could be cured, since Geordi needed a painful prosthetic to compensate for his blindness.





I don't see why Picard would want hair. Patrick Stewart didn't need hair to be seen as a sex symbol by TNG's female audience. The producers thought it was Riker who'd be the sex symbol, not the middle-aged bald guy, but they misunderstood what women were really attracted to.
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Didn't they eventually make the point that Geordi could have had it fixed, but chose to keep the VISOR because of how much more he could do with it, and how used to it he was? (Also, wondering if in some ways, the VISOR was a more advanced version of the mesh Mianda Jones wore on TOS?) But I digress.
 
F. King Daniel said:
Definitely not all. Remember "The Host"?
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To be fair, Crusher didn't say in "The Host" that she had a problem with Odan's new host being female, but with Odan repeatedly changing appearance so she didn't know what she'd get. Even if it had been specifically about the new host's gender, expressing a personal preference for heterosexual partners doesn't make someone prejudiced about others' preferences. Maybe the writers intended the subtext to be homophobic, but the actual text is more forgiving to Crusher.
 
Uh, has this become a thread about sex and TNG?

Good!

I understand that TNG is obviously an American product created in the '80s, but it's interesting how all the relationships in it reflect the social mores of the time and place. That is, very conservative (other than simply being more comfortable talking about sex).

Basically, the characters
a) are dating
b) they are married (and of course they are exclusive)
c) are only having a one-night stand.

We're never presented with other options.

Basically, the average Northern European country at the time had more choices.
 
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You better believe it OP, Roddenberry was back in charge! If we’d had such a thing as a “Producer’s Cut” you can bet we’d see the orgies and sexual shenanigans in great detail.
 
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