Ray Hardgrit's Simultaneous TOS TNG VOY ENT Rewatch Saga

[Ray Hardgrit]

Hi, I'm Ray Hardgrit and I'm a huge Star Trek fan. The kind of fan that only saw most of these episodes once, back when I was a teenager, and barely remembers any of them. But I'm also the kind of fan that keeps reading threads, reviews, articles etc. that discuss these classic shows and tell me facts like:

• The original Star Trek is too slow paced, campy and archaic compared to modern television.
• Season one of The Next Generation is horrible and probably the worst season of all of Star Trek.
• Voyager immediately threw away the potential of its premise and became Next Gen 2.0.
• Viewers were burned out on Star Trek when Enterprise launched and it failed due to 'franchise fatigue'.

So it occurred to me, what if I rewatched these four series from the start at the same time, alternating between the shows each episode. That way I'll be equally bored of Star Trek while watching each series and I'll be able to assess them fairly. I'll also be able to compare what the series are doing and make lots of interesting observations! Theoretically. I'm not claiming to be any good at this.


Why am I really doing this?

Okay I've got a website where I pick an episode of a science fiction series and write about it scene by scene, with tons of pictures and text, and I figured I should watch the Trek series and see if there were any episodes that jumped out at me. Then it occurred to me that I shouldn't waste the opportunity to write a few notes about each of them as I went, maybe in the form of a short review. It... seemed logical at the time.

I've only been watching a few Trek episodes a week, but scruffy half-finished episode reviews are starting to pile up and I feel like I should be doing something with them. They're not a great fit for my site's format though, and really it'd work better if the reviews were read together in the order I wrote them. Like in a thread.

Then I thought about this forum that I've been lurking around on and off for the last 500 years, and I remembered all those watch threads I've enjoyed. 'A Niner Watches Babylon 5', that kind of thing. It occurred to me that I've got an excuse to stop lurking and finally start a thread of my own! A frustratingly slow thread with too many words that I'll likely never be able to finish.


My plan

Honestly if I can just get through the season ones I'll call this a success, as that'll be something like 94 episodes alone. I figure that if I can write about one episode every few days I can get them all done within a year. I'll also be ranking each group of four episodes afterwards and picking a winner, basically just so you can disagree with me afterwards and tell me what you think the real winner should be.

Note: The first four reviews I'm going to copy and paste from my own website, then after that it'll be all original content. I'll edit them down a bit but let me know if they're still too long.


Why aren't I including Deep Space Nine?
Everyone told me it sucked and I should skip it. Actually no, I just finished a rewatch a few years back so it's a bit too soon for me to watch it again, and including my ancient DS9 reviews here would break the premise of the thread.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

Star Trek: The Original Series 1-01 - The Man Trap

I only had fuzzy memories of these stories before this rewatch, but I had a feeling I didn't like The Man Trap all that much the first time around. I also had the feeling I wasn't looking forward to sitting through it again. It wasn't actually all that bad though! Well, not at first anyway.

The episode starts off a little bit like Forbidden Planet, with the crew checking on couple of people that insist to be left alone on their dead wasteland of a planet, but then turns into something more like Alien or The Thing with a killer prowling the ship... eventually. It takes 20 minutes before the creature makes it to the Enterprise and then there's an entire hour of it following people around trying to suck their salt. Well, okay it's more like 7 minutes, but it felt like an eternity and that really hurt the pacing. In fact this is almost like they'd taken an Animated Series episode and dragged it out to last a full 50 minutes as there just isn't enough content here to justify its run time. What's worse is that a lot of the content it does have is scenes of Uhura trying to get Spock to be interested in her, Kirk and McCoy arguing about how old Nancy looks, or people discussing how hot Yeoman Rand is. Also a lot of people eating or drinking I noticed. You could draw a connection there, as love and food are the two things that the salt vampire craves, but that's maybe a stretch.

I'm not sure if it's a good thing or not that there's absolutely zero paranoia among the crew. No one's freaking out or pointing phasers at each other and there are no blood tests. There's also no mystery of who the creature currently is, at least for the viewer, as we get to see every transformation. This actually works to make the salt vampire more sympathetic I reckon, as we get to walk a mile in their shoes. I mean seriously, it spends ages walking around the ship trying and failing to get its salt. The impression I got is that the creature is a salt addict, murdering people for the quickest, easiest fix and not feeling a shred of guilt over it, even though the slightest bit of patience might have gotten it all the salt and love it wanted. All it had to do was avoid being examined by McCoy and we can assume that's possible if Nancy's been dead for two years, as they're checked up on annually. The creature's basically a psychopath, without a shred of empathy or consideration for others, and zero ability to think ahead.

Intelligence isn't a requirement for the crew to treat it with compassion though, so it was a bit of a shame that there was more discussion about Nancy's grey hairs than about the most ethical way to deal with their problem. They go straight from 'how can we find this thing' to Kirk turning up at McCoy's quarters with a phaser, and there was no effort made to communicate with it or capture it. They've got all kinds of advanced technology like phasers with a stun setting, transporters, forcefields, and doors with locks on them, but the best idea Spock came up with was smacking it around 7 times and yelling "shoot it, it's killing the captain!" Even that seemed like a bit of a complicated concept for McCoy who had to stand there and really think about it. The big dilemma of the story is whether or not he can shoot something that looks like his ex, but obviously isn't, and his behaviour's so strange I have to wonder if the salt vampire had him hypnotised somehow.

Star Trek's famous for its morals and messages and I spotted a whole bunch in this story: 'don't sabotage your long-term goals for short-term gratification', 'don't walk off to screw another man's wife in the middle of an away mission' and 'extinction makes people sad'. Other than that it was kind of shallow and empty I thought. I have a feeling this is going to turn out to be my least favourite of the first batch of stories, which means things can only get better from here.

Rating: 5

(Text borrowed from my own review on the 'Ray Hardgrit's Sci-Fi Adventures' blog. I don't intend to make a habit of it. Or of double posting. Sorry.)

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

Absolute silence is definitely one way to get a message across loudly. Trouble is I can't tell if the message is 'No one cares', 'Your writing sucks' or 'Nice wall of text, but what do you want us to say about it?' I'm sure if I keep going like this the message will be "Banned for double posting", but it seems weird to me to just walk away without saying anything, so I'll explain here that I disappear after this it's because I let the thread die the natural death it deserved. That said, I did get one like, so I think that deserves another review:

Star Trek: The Next Generation 1-01 - Encounter at Farpoint

It seems unfair to compare Encounter at Farpoint to The Man Trap as a pilot episode, as The Man Trap was really just a regular episode they picked to show first. This, on the other hand, is the real deal. Complete with pointless scenes in Main Engineering just to give them an excuse to spend some of their pilot budget building the set, and lots of padding to establish all the characters.

The episode starts off tight and dramatic but then loses its focus and momentum just as they get given a time limit! And honestly the side scenes didn't do a great job of selling me on this new crew. Worf is the surprise highlight of the bridge scenes, stealing all the good moments from Tasha even though it's not clear what his job actually is. At least the new role of security chief is well defined: she's there to be perfectly silent and do nothing until it's time to make an impulsive emotional outburst. Speaking of emotional outbursts, I liked Science Officer Troi early on but once she's replaced by "Pain. Unhappiness. Terrible despair!" Troi she never recovers.

Seems that DC Fontana's original plan for the episode was mostly going to be about characters walking around identical tunnels and sensing things, but Gene Roddenberry's rewrite ramped the 'Star Trek' up to 11, with crew facing a godlike super-being there to test their ethics. Like The Corbomite Maneuver the story was meant to be a statement of intent right at the start, telling the audience that this series wasn't about the heroes firing phasers and getting the mission done at any cost, it was about them collecting all the information and using it to figure out the moral option.

The 'godlike super-being standing in judgement over humanity' trope had already been done to death in the Original Series, but Q stands out from earlier examples because of how he keeps popping up to add commentary to events and much fun he's having arguing about the nature of man with Patrick Stewart. In fact he's a big part of why this episode had my attention from start to finish, despite the pacing issues and the dull story. Sometimes I was fascinated by how cheesy and over-dramatic it was, or by the bizarre conversations, but other times I was pulled in by the earnest space adventure and the scenes of Patrick Stewart and John de Lancie trying to turn it into Shakespeare.

This is a beta version of the show and it wouldn't be fully patched until season 3, but a lot of talented and enthusiastic people worked on the episode and that shines through. This is the first TNG story and they already had the sets, the actors, the ship, the theme tune - everything that's iconic about Next Gen. I can see why I stuck with the series the first time around. Also those visual effects still look great to me, especially in HD. Turns out that ILM knew what they were doing with their spaceship models.

Rating: 6

Am I being too harsh to Encounter at Farpoint? Should I continue onto Voyager's Caretaker? Did I spell Corbomite Maneuver right? Post a reply! Or don't. Either way I'll get your message.

 

[Tim Thomason]

Hey Ray, I liked your post and I like the idea, as it's very similar to one I had about year ago of watching the first, second, and so on episodes of each series (all 10 of them plus a movie), and reviewing them in clumps like once a week (for, up to 178 weeks... it would get easier after a bit), comparing and contrasting.

But I was never much of a rewatch guy, and I don't know if there's a big enough audience at the moment for it (or anything, really, the board is slowing down in places). You have a much more manageable, if selective system. Posting them individually in "walls of text" might make people gloss over them as just random episodic reviews just in an odd order, but I see in your second review you're taking the challenge seriously and comparing and contrasting first episodes a bit. More of that seems good.

If you post it, I look forward to your review of Caretaker and its more appropriate comparison with Encounter.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

It's pretty obvious now that there isn't a whole lot of people interested in seeing this thread continue. But if I finish writing about all four pilots then at least I'll have a bit of closure, so that's my plan right now. Man, it's a shame that Tuvix isn't Voyager's second episode, I could've gotten this thread to eight pages off that alone.

Star Trek: Voyager 1-01 - Caretaker

Caretaker isn't the most intriguing or poetic title for a sci-fi pilot, but I've never seen anyone complain. I don't remember anyone complaining that this wasn't real Star Trek either. Like Encounter at Farpoint they've made sure to tie it to the rest of the franchise by including familiar models and cameos. In this case we got the beautiful Galor-class cruiser, Deep Space 9 station and Quark. Oh, and Morn too!

The episode's also almost absurdly Star Trek in its themes, like it was following a checklist. It's got the godlike superbeing who likes to test people (biologically in this case), there's the moral dilemma, and there's a message about how you need to leave gods behind and face adversity to grow. Other things that felt strangely familiar: crew members finding themselves inexplicably transported to a bizarre recreation of Earth, a civilisation that's moved to a new home, and a scene where the heroes try to escape from underground tunnels while the surface is bombarded by energy blasts. Plus like Encounter at Farpoint it spends a lot of time in what looks like a futuristic mall. Except this time it has escalators! In fact the extensive location shooting helps give this much higher production values than Farpoint. It's definitely a slicker, less ridiculous production, as you'd expect from a team that had already been doing this for eight years and had better technology to work with.

Another thing this episode has in common with Encounter at Farpoint is that it starts to lose its focus and get distracted in the second half as it gives all the other characters a bit of screen time. In fact I was going to say that Janeway seems to get less to do than the other captains overall, but then I checked the script and discovered she actually has over twice the lines of Paris (who has almost twice the lines of anyone else). I think part of the problem is that she doesn't get the chance to bounce off a strong antagonist like Picard did with Q. Dealing with a frustratingly uncommunicative banjo player and the most forgettable Kazon in the series wasn't the best demonstration of Kate Mulgrew's talent.

The episode also had to set up the premise of the series, with two crews from different factions stranded together on the same ship, 75 years from home, and it definitely did that. But the whole Maquis situation here feels like nothing but set up for later stories... except they forgot to set them up. Beyond the scrolling text at the start there isn't one single moment spent on establishing who these people are or what they're fighting for. We get basically no scenes of Janeway and Chakotay really talking; they never come into conflict, debate anything, or even get to know each other.

It's a bit early for me to assess whether Voyager's first season is just TNG season 8 (especially as I haven't reached TNG season 7), but this has already has different vibe to both the other episodes I've seen. It has a distinct mix of personalities, they're in a more desperate situation, and their starship is less cosy and colourful. They're definitely not going to be doing routine checks on archaeologists or shipping chilli peppers in this series.

This was a pretty decent episode I thought, with likeable characters and much better pacing than anything I've seen so far. My only real issue with it is the dull sonic wallpaper music.

Rating: 7

Am I being too kind to Caretaker? Did I use too many words again? Should Janeway have tried to use the array to get back home at any cost even though the trip killed something like a third of the crew first time around?

Next time: The story of a legendary Archer and a Broken Bow.

 

[dupersuper]

I've always had a weak spot for Trek pilots. Just the whole "introduce an eclectic crew" thing really does it for me for some reason.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

Yeah it's nice to see a crew of strangers getting together to go on a space adventure or solve a space mystery for the very first time. Speaking of which...

Star Trek: Enterprise 1-01 - Broken Bow

I can still vaguely remember my first reaction to hearing that Series V was going to be a prequel about Captain Jackson Archer, his Vulcan science officer T'Pau, and Southerner Charlie 'Spike' Tucker etc. I thought the news sites had fell for an obviously fake rumour or the producers really wanted it to be 1966 again. They're still not my favourite characters to be honest, but it's nice to see a less 'evolved' (but still heroic) crew for a change.

My fuzzy memories of watching Enterprise say that Mayweather and Hoshi barely show up in the show and Captain Archer is an angry and incompetent captain, but everyone got something to do in this episode and Scott Bakula was very likeable (as usual). On the other hand, T'Pol is hostile and condescending to the rest of the crew from the moment she comes aboard and this interpersonal conflict that the writers were so desperate to bring back to Trek is resolved by Trip saying "C'mon, you owe the captain!" over and over until she gives in.

Plus the producers really should've known better than to have a translator on the main crew, as she's made redundant by a handheld gadget halfway through! Though she does have the other job of being scared all the time, because this is a darker and creepier kind of Star Trek. It's also action Star Trek! The writers wanted to write character drama but this has far more phaser shoot-outs and space battles than any of the episodes I've seen so far. It mostly works though I think, unlike their embarassing attempts to sex things up. Star Trek's been kind of sexed up from the moment a fake green slave girl started dancing for Captain Pike, but it's rarely felt as forced and awkward as this.

This is legit Star Trek though I reckon. It's even got the sci-fi weirdness that all the pilots have, in the form of the Temporal Cold War, even if they forgot to include a sci-fi dilemma to go along with it this time. Other than that this episode is all prequel and it does a reasonable job of setting up an interesting new status quo where humanity is only just starting to get out into the galaxy and be a part of things. It's a story about a plucky crew of astronauts trying to show their Vulcan parents that humanity has the right stuff to go on weekly space adventures, so it's a little like Encounter at Farpoint. Except they're not trying to prove their morality, they're trying to prove they're competent enough to do Star Trek at all in their primative prototype starship. It's so flimsy and low tech that the writers had to do a find/replace on the script to change 'shields' to 'hull plating', 'tractor beam' to 'grappler', and 'transporter' to, uh, 'transporter'. Technology's already marching forward however, as Reed managed to just find a box of more advanced ray guns halfway through the episode.

But here's the biggest problem I have with Broken Bow: the style of it. Sometimes it looks like it was shot in black and white and colourised, other times it looks like they forgot to colourise it. I know it's supposed to be a prequel to a series that was made at the dawn of colour TV and I should expect it to look a bit 50s, but c'mon. Actually my biggest problem with the episode is the same issue I had with Caretaker: the soundtrack. Music's very subjective and personally the particular kind of cringy soft rock that creeps into this episode made me feel like I was being subjected to torture. It's funny how the series overall is trying to be grittier and more modern, but the theme and the sepia-tinted flashbacks are the opposite of that.

Though despite its issues I found the episode to be pretty entertaining and the ending is plenty dramatic. I like how it's always moving forward and the crew have to continually adapt to face new problems and find a way back on the trail instead of just dwelling on a mystery. Prequels aren't always what you want, but in my opinion Broken Bow makes a good case for Enterprise's existence.

Rating: 7

Alright, that'll be my last review unless people want me to continue on to Charlie X, but I'll probably make one more post later picking my favourite of the four episodes. You don't have to wait until then to disagree with me though, you can share your own feelings on Broken Bow right now!

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

Alright, the first and final episode battle is between the pilot episodes: TOS's The Man Trap vs TNG's Encounter at Farpoint vs Voyager's Caretaker vs Enterprise's Broken Bow. I'll be selecting my subjective winner based on a number of criteria, including how much it entertained me, and... maybe other things too, if I can think of any.

The Man Trap... isn't the winner. The Original Series is supposed to have a powerhouse first season, but its first episode is surprisingly dull considering it features a hand-puppet plant and plenty of Sulu. In fact I'd even rate it below...

Encounter at Farpoint. This episode had the strongest antagonist of the four and some interesting world building, but it's also kind of ridiculous at times and the pacing really falls apart in the second half. It's like a bizarre alternate universe version of the TNG I remember, and that gives it is own kind of charm. But not enough for it to be able to beat...

Broken Bow. Second place goes to the NX-01 crew, who have pulled ahead through sheer stubborn determination. It was great to watch the crew hitting dead end after dead end and just keep on going, through phaser fights, space battles, and a weird awkward decontamination scene. However first place has to go to...

Caretaker. Voyager has been criticised for failing to live up to its potential, but this first episode does a fine job of setting up that potential. It's more engrossing than Man Trap, more competently put together than Farpoint, and to me it's prettier than Broken Bow. Also it's its birthday today! It first aired on January 16th 1995, 27 years ago.


Alright I'm done. Thanks to anyone who has been reading my reviews, but I won't be posting anymore for obvious reasons.

 

[Farscape One]

Very nice analysis of the pilots. Well done. I do disagree, however, with which ones are the best.

Personally, I feel "CARETAKER" slightly edges out as the best pilot for the franchise. I understand your point about only having the Maquis situation be explained through the short essay at the beginning, but VOYAGER had an advantage the other shows didn't... the Maquis were created and built in the tv season before the pilot aired. We got a few episodes of TNG and DS9 to introduce them, and I think that helped with the overall pace of this pilot. The other pilots were more bogged down with the need for more exposition, but this one had a big chunk of their premise already explained before the pilot is even produced.

"BROKEN BOW" is my choice for second place, and honestly if it weren't for the Temporal Cold War (which I HATED that storyline), I would have called this pilot the best in the franchise. I really love how the ship, technology, and feel of everything is stripped down STAR TREK. What I mean by that is its more hands on... actual buttons, knobs, corridors that feel like a slightly bigger submarine. One other aspect that ENTERPRISE got right from the jump was bringing back a sense of awe, wonder, and adventure to the franchise. We haven't seen that in a long time. Even DS9, for as much as its my favorite of the STAR TREK shows, really didn't give us that sense of wonder, despite an entirely new quadrant right at their doorstep. VOYAGER did at first, at here and there midway in the show, but the last time we really feel that sense of wonder and awe and adventure was early TNG. That alone overrides the obvious sexification of the decon scene. (I will give this show credit for trying to make it more equal. There was pretty much the same amount of male and female throughout the seris' run.)

TNG is the reason I became a scifi fan, particularly Data. Despite this, I put this pilot as among the lower tier of the franchise. The main problem is that it feels like two different stories thrust together, which is pretty much what happened behind the scenes. Q really helps this one along, though.

I honestly can't use the aired pilot of TOS as the comparison because it was not the produced pilot. I tend to go by production order, and I always look to "THE CAGE" as the pilot when comparing the pilots.


I really like the idea behind this thread, and it would be interesting to see how episodes from different series hold up against each other according to airdate order.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

Seems like Caretaker's the unanimous winner! That's 1 point to Team Janeway.

One other aspect that ENTERPRISE got right from the jump was bringing back a sense of awe, wonder, and adventure to the franchise.

That's true. In fact it's a bit of a shame maybe that they made their unenthusiastic Vulcan the science officer as I feel like their scientist should've been the most hyped for every new discovery they made. They could've made T'Pol the linguistically gifted communications officer and had Hoshi as a science officer driven by equal parts awe and terror.