Revisiting ST-TNG...
- Thread starter Warped9
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While the acting is good in that one I have a BIG problem with it conceptually. You need to undertake a covert operation in a highly dangerous area and rather than send experienced covert specialists you send the commanding officer of your flagship, his Chief Medical Officer and his Chief of Security. I can't buy that.
To be fair I think the writers did anticipate someone would say "this isn't very likely" because it is explained in the episode: Picard is the only person in Starfleet who is familiar with Theta-Band bio weapons, Worf is there because he's a lot of muscle and Crusher's there because she's supposedly an expert in dealing with bio toxins.
I think basically it's a case of you have to accept that the episode is saying "yes we know that this is ridiculous, but just go with it, we're going to tell a good story!"
I think basically it's a case of you have to accept that the episode is saying "yes we know that this is ridiculous, but just go with it, we're going to tell a good story!"
I remember that, but it wasn't a good enough rationalization. With so many people in the Federation involved in so many different things there would have been someone else more suitable.
Not much to quibble with on the other episodes mentioned but "Allegiance". That episode really shouldn't work..abductions get tiresome after awhile. I feel that the episode was solid throughout, there wasn't any element that was negative for me. I also enjoyed the crew interactions in the episode and the fact the the experimenters were not superpowered beings, but rather, somewhat more advanced and naive, and finally got their comeuppance. THE AsOTW were also a major strong point of the episode, receiving more cultural development than usual. Gave it 4 1/2 stars for an episode with no weak points.
RAMA
RAMA
Wow you'd hate almost every TOS episode then using this rationale!!! Since the captain should never be on 98% of the landing parties. Neither should Spock...or Scotty...by comparison Chain of Command is child's play.
Yeah, I got that feeling as well. As things went on it felt like the universe was basically the Federation, Klingons, Romulans and Cardassians. Maybe if you went through a wormhole you'd end up in the Gamma or Delta Quadrant and there'd be other stuff out there, but it no longer felt like they were constantly on the verge of discovering fresh new regions of the Alpha Quadrant (what's on the other side of the Klingon Empire, anyway?). Overall, I liked TNG better as it went on, but still.
You can't hold something against TOS that was established in TNG. We know that the captain of both military (The Omega Glory) and civilian (Bread and Circuses) craft headed up landing parties in TOS.
I'm talking about in the realm of common sense..but established by David Gerrold in "The World of ST" circa 1973, although of course anyone with any real knowledge knows captains don't go ashore during naval or Marine missions. Would Starfleet put their most valuable asset down on the planet every time? Hell no! But its TV and the actors have to make their money. STNG is no different. So the point is, if he can suspend disbelief for 70+ TOS eps, he can't do it for a few STNG episodes out of the entire whole?
RAMA
Well to be fair by TNG's 3rd season they were trying to take a more "realistic" approach to things and that was certainly established and rooted by the time the sixth season came along. So that Kirk was allowed to do whatever he wanted isn't comparable to Picard being able to do so given the more "realistic" tone the series tried to take and taking the captain of your flagship, his chief medical officer and his chief security officer and sending off on this kind of operation is a bit silly.
Imagine if the government decided to take Speaker of the House, the Secretary of Defense and the head of the Department of Health and send them into a cave in Iraq to find Osama because the three of them happen to have some special piece of information no one else has?
It doesn't make a whole lot of sense (and yes I realize selecting three government officials isn't completely in line with three military officers) that it'd happen, Picard's diplomacy track-record was already quite well known and Beverly's ran Starfleet Medical for a period of time so both were obviously very important people you don't just send on some dangerous commando raid that's way out of their job description (chiefly diplomatic expansion and exploration.) You'd think Starfleet would have a special-ops group to do this kind of commando bullshit and they would've instead used Beverly and Picard as experts to train the commandos on what to do.
But, nope, we'll just take two of the most important people in our service and send them into some cave they're not supposed to be in, have to get to by devious means and hope for the best.
Imagine if the government decided to take Speaker of the House, the Secretary of Defense and the head of the Department of Health and send them into a cave in Iraq to find Osama because the three of them happen to have some special piece of information no one else has?
It doesn't make a whole lot of sense (and yes I realize selecting three government officials isn't completely in line with three military officers) that it'd happen, Picard's diplomacy track-record was already quite well known and Beverly's ran Starfleet Medical for a period of time so both were obviously very important people you don't just send on some dangerous commando raid that's way out of their job description (chiefly diplomatic expansion and exploration.) You'd think Starfleet would have a special-ops group to do this kind of commando bullshit and they would've instead used Beverly and Picard as experts to train the commandos on what to do.
But, nope, we'll just take two of the most important people in our service and send them into some cave they're not supposed to be in, have to get to by devious means and hope for the best.
Well said.
But sometimes the circumstances are so outlandish that they throw the viewer out of the moment. Chain of Command represents one of those times.
Here's a mistake you're making, I think: Star Trek: The Next Generation is not primarily an adventure show. The Original Series was. That's part of the reason TNG became so successful, after it's first 2 seasons were over; it stopped trying to be what TOS was, and was better at, and became almost a different subgenre of sci-fi entirely. It became it's own unique entity. TNG is very much a drama, a political show, a show of moral dilemmas, something like, say, West Wing, or The Practice in space, but it certainly was not, for the most part, an adventure show, and regardless of the opening title theme and its claim to "boldly going," the show is NOT about boldly going anywhere, at least not physically. So, the fact that they are always near a space station is not a problem at all - the Enterprise-D is not primarily a ship of exploration, but a symbol of the Federation, a diplomatic envoy. There is not a lot of being "way out there" because TNG is not about going way out there - it's about finding conflict and drama right here (again, for the most part.)
"Captain's Log: Stardate 41153.7. We are headed towards Farpoint station beyond which lies the great unexplored mass of the galaxy..."
The very first log-entry of the series, paraphrased.
The idea of families on board was the concept that they were supposed to be heading out into unexplored space to do the, you know, whole "new civilizations" thing. But as noted in Warped's reviews the series seemed to meander around a lot in Federation space. Not a bad thing, necessarily, as I liked what we got but there's not a whole lot of "bodly going where no man has gone before" going on there. The Enterprise was supposed to be on a generation-long mission of exploration, hence the civilians on board and other creature-comforts on the ship. But, yeah, it didn't pan out that way.
I still personally have no problem with families on-ship since they ARE on a long mission and not going back home on any regular basis so certainly crew on the ship would want loved ones nearby and not be away from them for a year, or several, at a time. And I don't buy that it's "dangerous" on the ship at all considering we only see a tiny fraction of the time they were on the ship compared to the several years the series spanned. Attacks and dangerous situations the likes of which we seen were rare. IIRC the episode "Pen Pals" itself spans several weeks of time of the ship just puttering around a section of space doing scans! So I'd argue life on a starship doesn't pose to much greater danger than anywhere else.
The very first log-entry of the series, paraphrased.
The idea of families on board was the concept that they were supposed to be heading out into unexplored space to do the, you know, whole "new civilizations" thing. But as noted in Warped's reviews the series seemed to meander around a lot in Federation space. Not a bad thing, necessarily, as I liked what we got but there's not a whole lot of "bodly going where no man has gone before" going on there. The Enterprise was supposed to be on a generation-long mission of exploration, hence the civilians on board and other creature-comforts on the ship. But, yeah, it didn't pan out that way.
I still personally have no problem with families on-ship since they ARE on a long mission and not going back home on any regular basis so certainly crew on the ship would want loved ones nearby and not be away from them for a year, or several, at a time. And I don't buy that it's "dangerous" on the ship at all considering we only see a tiny fraction of the time they were on the ship compared to the several years the series spanned. Attacks and dangerous situations the likes of which we seen were rare. IIRC the episode "Pen Pals" itself spans several weeks of time of the ship just puttering around a section of space doing scans! So I'd argue life on a starship doesn't pose to much greater danger than anywhere else.
Actually they're probably less outlandish in COC than 60-70% of the missions Kirk went on.
Worf was an experienced and trained head of security for a dangerous mission behind enemy territory. Crusher apparently had supreme knowledge of the bio-weapon they were going to find. Only Picard had no real reason to be there (I know there's a reason given, but it doesn't hold up too well...but at least there IS one given!). How often did Kirk beam down to a war zone or mysterious situation with no other rationale other than he was in command?
RAMA
What happened was mainly Michael Piller realizing there was gold to be mined from STNG's backstory..i.e: the Klingon civil war saga, Romulans/Spock, Borg/Picard, Data's quest for humanity, et al. He was right, both from the number of good episodes and the increasing popularity of the series every season. There was still plenty of exploration to be had, first contact situations and totally new life forms: colony creatures, 2-d lifeforms, computer generated cultures, non-corporeal explorers, et al.
"Tin Man" ***
The Enterprise races the Romulans to contact a space borne lifeform.
This episode usually gets a lot of praise and I have to say I think there are a lot of good ideas in it, but I thought in execution it was just okay. I can't really put my finger on why, but I think it could have been better. He may have had his reasons, but Tam Elbrun was still a little on the rude side. The idea of a space boren organism is a fascinating one, but we really don't get to see much of it. It is a little hard to accept that they can be so fascinated with this creature because it's not as if they'd never seen anything like it---the crystalline entity from "Datalore" was also a space going life form.
"Hollow Pursuits" **
Lt. Barclay has a hard time fitting in with ship's crew.
This just bored me. I watch Star Trek for space adventure and science fiction stories, not the struggles of a socially inept guest character.
The Enterprise races the Romulans to contact a space borne lifeform.
This episode usually gets a lot of praise and I have to say I think there are a lot of good ideas in it, but I thought in execution it was just okay. I can't really put my finger on why, but I think it could have been better. He may have had his reasons, but Tam Elbrun was still a little on the rude side. The idea of a space boren organism is a fascinating one, but we really don't get to see much of it. It is a little hard to accept that they can be so fascinated with this creature because it's not as if they'd never seen anything like it---the crystalline entity from "Datalore" was also a space going life form.
"Hollow Pursuits" **
Lt. Barclay has a hard time fitting in with ship's crew.
This just bored me. I watch Star Trek for space adventure and science fiction stories, not the struggles of a socially inept guest character.
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