I remember a TNG marathon from years ago where only three or four episodes from this season were aired and one was that dreadful pilot. The show really didn't find it's footing until Season 3.
Ranking the eps so far and where does DSC rank now amongst the other series?
- Thread starter Roald
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TNG taken as a whole was a trend-setter. TNG in its first season was bloody awful and perceived by most as a very bad idea.
It does seem to me like the thread was asking "Where does DSC rank when you compare it to what the other series had done by this point", not "how does DSC as a whole stack up against the other series?"
If I'd only ever watched Encounter at Farpoint, The Naked Now, Code of Honor, The Last Outpost and Where No One Has Gone Before, I'd say it was the worst Star Trek series of all time.
My point isn't just that early TNG is bad, it's also that it was basically (bad) TOS with a new crew. It wasn't doing anything original yet.
I think DSC is trying to do something more than action-adventure in space. What draws me to this series is the moral dilemmas presented and the struggle each character seems to be going through. Burnham's slow path to redemption, Lorca's shady past and morally questionable present behavior, Saru dealing with his fight-or-flight responses, jealousy over Burnham and learning to be a leader, Stamets's drive to create something that will help humanity only to have it repurposed for war, and of course the debate over the use of the tardigrade. The last episode had me near tears at multiple points. To write it all off as "just action adventure" is a bit disingenuous.
Bang on. Its second episode was a rip-off of one of TNG's earliest episodes. Imagine if the internet had been around then; we never would have heard the end of it.
It goes without saying beside TOS. It had to be like Star Trek TOS, keeping the spirit alive, and different at the same time. And nothing is more predictable than Hollywood movies. If you don't like TNG, good for you. It still became highly successful and a true trend setter. Why you hate it, is probably why it was great and different than almost everything else on TV (beside TOS, Stargate, Doctor Who, Sliders, etc).
I find it so great TNG has been able to achieve so much success without only tapping into the lowest common denominator of it's viewers (violence and sex).
And to my point, Discovery doesn't try that. It doesn't try to be a trend setter. It won't go beyond JJ Abrams movie. It has the potential to be a great action-adventure in space, which I would love, but you can already see it won't go beyond it.
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Every cast member seems to have something to say on this one, all in agreement. This is one of those instances where I've found the most measured response to be from Wheaton, which I don't find often.
It's an interesting episode IMO because no one involved would feel the way the "people" were portrayed was ok.
Sometimes you truly don't know what it's gonna turn out like until shooting is over, but you gotta wonder after it was done, and someone screened it, I mean yeah it was the 80's but, I thought it was kinda obvious. That's one you just shelve and never air.
1. Butcher's Knife
2. Binary Stars
3. Vulcan Hello
4. Choose Your Pain
5. Context is for Kings
There's a lot of issues with the show... but it's still the best first season besides TOS so far.
2. Binary Stars
3. Vulcan Hello
4. Choose Your Pain
5. Context is for Kings
There's a lot of issues with the show... but it's still the best first season besides TOS so far.
There must be something wrong with me, something I'm missing, because it's almost universally accepted that TOS had the best first season and I've watched it many times and gotta say, I don't see it.
I just got done with DS9 season 1 and found it to be much more entertaining.
Maybe I should see a doctor.
The worst thing about the episode is it was such a stupendous fuckup that they avoided casting any alien race or random colony as people of color for the rest of Trek history. So you either ended up with all white aliens, or multiracial groups of aliens where it made no sense (e.g., isolated descendants of groups of castaways).
Literally the opposite of my perception. Awful pilot followed immediately by a very good episode (Fight or Flight)
I'm halfway between the two of you.
Worst pilot ever AND it all went downhill from there.
Seriously?
Balance of Terror?
The Corbomite Maneuver?
This Side of Paradise?
The Devil in the Dark?
Effing City on the Edge of Forever?
That's not just 'Star Trek Good' that's all-time TV good.
Didn't say that I hated it. It had some good episodes. But a trend setter? Please.
Partly thanks to it being on syndication and not on the major networks.
I have yet to see any sex in DIS. I can't even recall two people kissing and we're on five episodes now. Some violence maybe but hardly the gratuitous kind and very much in line for past Trek series.
To give you an example of the difference between the two let's take the last episode. We just found out that two members of the crew are gay and living together. On TNG, (which NEVER happened, so much for being trendsetting) we would have gotten this long winding speech about how much more "evolved" we are now compared to the twentieth century on relationships. The entire episode would have evolved around it and we would have been beaten over the head with that point. On DIS it was all told in a simple five minute sequence. No long rambling speeches, no pompous arrogance and no gratuitous sex involved. Just two normal guys brushing their teeth and having a conversation. We learn all we need to from it and no one had to get on a soapbox.That's clever writing and that's why DIS is so much better right now than TNG ever was that first season.
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TOS Season 1 was the best season of TOS, but it didn't really gel as a season until Gene Coon came on closer to the back half of the season. Some of the early episodes, like Charlie X, were pretty good, but they're of course products of their time.
Season 2 was not as good, IMHO. It had some great episodes (Amok Time, Mirror Mirror, The Doomsday Machine, and The Trouble With Tribbles) and a lot of mediocre filler. Season 3 was almost entirely garbage.
1.) TOS (The #1 champion)
2.) TNG (The "even better sequel", that's only #2 because I so damn love TOS)
3.) ENT (seasons 3 & 4)
4.A) VOY (decent continuation of TNG, with a great Janeway-Seven relationship)
4.B) DS9 (not as groundbreaking as TNG, but highly innovative and different, with amazing second-tier characters)
5.) ENT (season 1-2)
.
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#.) DIS (Way too soon to tell, waiting for the first WHAM!-episode that defies expectations and shapes the image of the series beyond a "plot-of-the-week" embedded in an overarching arc)
I think I have to wait until the end of the first season to be able to honestly rank DIS among the already existing series.
2.) TNG (The "even better sequel", that's only #2 because I so damn love TOS)
3.) ENT (seasons 3 & 4)
4.A) VOY (decent continuation of TNG, with a great Janeway-Seven relationship)
4.B) DS9 (not as groundbreaking as TNG, but highly innovative and different, with amazing second-tier characters)
5.) ENT (season 1-2)
.
.
#.) DIS (Way too soon to tell, waiting for the first WHAM!-episode that defies expectations and shapes the image of the series beyond a "plot-of-the-week" embedded in an overarching arc)
I think I have to wait until the end of the first season to be able to honestly rank DIS among the already existing series.
Nobody is saying TNG was terrible, the point being made is that it had a terrible beginning and wasn't until later it became a a critically acclaimed show. I love TNG, but those first season episodes were generally subpar.
Um, are you really forgetting episodes like "The Naked Now" that depicted the crew getting horny? The pleasure planet with half naked people having orgies? Riker going to the holodeck to get his rocks off? Let's not pretend TNG didn't try tapping into the lowest common denominator. I did at times because Gene Roddenberry was a horny old man.
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You say don't hate TNG (which is your perfect right otherwise), but your cynicism toward TNG betrays you. There's no long speech, both sides of situations are often deeply explored (when it's that type of episodes), and humans were never perceived as more evolved (it would betrays everything TNG stand for) as we meet very different and successful beings than us.
Homosexuality portrayed on TV is not trend setting or original anymore. 15 years too late.
TNG had an episode about homosexuality and transgender called the "The Outcast". The issue was viewed through sci-fi lens but it provides both point of views. It was not like the Outcast aliens were all evil, bigots and bad and we humans superior and open minded. You could understand the Outcast one-gender alien point of view. It made sense to them. And if you say you predicted the conclusion of this episode you're lying. The alien end up "corrected" and happy about it. No way you would have predicted that in all your cynicism about Star Trek TNG. Just one episode disprove all your points about TNG.
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