I hadn't seen this episode in a long time and didn't really remember much about it. I watched it today and I loved it, It felt alot like an episode from TOS. The comedy was very good through out the whole episode and unlike alot of season 1 I didn't find anything cringe worthy. I also loved the guardian. Does anyone else like this episode?
The Last Outpost=great episode
- Thread starter Silver Roc
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Yeah I liked it I can remember the 1st time I saw it. I use to rent them out from my local video shop two episodes per tape this one was a great episode kept me on the edge of my seat when I was ten.
I think the ferengi from that episode were very new at that point and had to be more explained, I noticed that they changed a lot during the next 6 years. I think the producers of TNG wanted a new bad guys in TNG and they were it but I didn't think that they produced the same Badness as the Klingons or romulans from the TOS .
IMO the 1st season of TNG was fun and introduced at lot of new exciting changes !!!!
I think the ferengi from that episode were very new at that point and had to be more explained, I noticed that they changed a lot during the next 6 years. I think the producers of TNG wanted a new bad guys in TNG and they were it but I didn't think that they produced the same Badness as the Klingons or romulans from the TOS .
IMO the 1st season of TNG was fun and introduced at lot of new exciting changes !!!!
Completely agree.
I think its because they were creating the universe as they were going along. The bigger Star Trek got, the smaller the universe seemed somehow.
This is exactly it - they were exploring their version of Trek, defining the characters and so on. A lot of people say that the show only "got good" in the third season, but I've always thought that it missed something - the writing settled down and got better in noticable respects, but much of the inventiveness involved in imagining the whole show into existence was gone by that time. In the case of TOS, those things all came together in the first year.
I have always really liked this episode. Armin Shimmerman plays one of the Ferengi. The Ferengi were very funny especialy when they are telling the Guardian that "they make their females wear clothing". Al in al, I think it was one of the better episodes in Season 1.
I always wondered what this advanced T9 energy convertor that the Ferengi stole was.
The Ferengi seem to have pretty good technology so it would have to be something very special to risk armed conflict with the Federation flagship.
Would Picard really have fired on the Marauder over a simple peice of equipment?
The Ferengi seem to have pretty good technology so it would have to be something very special to risk armed conflict with the Federation flagship.
Would Picard really have fired on the Marauder over a simple peice of equipment?
I agree with all of you. While the characters are much better fleshed out in the later seasons (and there are still some truly wonderful stories to be found there) the first couple of seasons really do have a certain "exploratory" quality that is just not present elsewhere.
The situations are inventive and extraordinary, and often based around a concept, rather than a conflict. They are an idea given a vague storyline, rather than a plot. I like that a lot.
As for The Last Outpost, the only thing that jars slightly on rewatching are the references to Sun Tzu, and that's only because of the close temporal proximity to Wall Street. Its incessant quoting of Sun Tzu makes this ep feel "of its time" in that respect. After Wall Street, it seemed like everybody (even in real life) was quoting Sun Tzu for a few years.
I'm being grossly unfair to negatively judge it in this way, as I just checked the air/release dates and TNG actually got there first, and clearly developed separately. But still, they were so close together that both get unfairly conflated in my memory.
This episode was interesting and underrated...perhaps a bit overly preachy in the Riker scenes. The Ferengi here are perfectly fine as a one-time foil to make the thematic point of the episode if you take the episode individually, but since they had been intended as recurring enemies, they fail on that level. I enjoyed the description of the T'Kon Empire, and I'd have loved to have seen this expanded into a two parter or sequel, focusing mainly on them and the Enterprise crew. Perhaps a wayward "star mover" device or rogue T'kon portal might have been thrown into the mix.
RAMA
RAMA
First two seasons of TNG and first season of TOS it really felt like they were out there exploring space and stuff.
I loved all the "starfleet last sent a ship here 90 years ago" type stuff. It made the universe feel as massive as it is. It really felt like the buck stopped with Kirk/Picard - they were the intergalactic policeman who were making the decisions.
When the warp drive broke in WNMHGB you really felt they were screwed. Years to the next Starbase - they were really out on the edge of the galaxy. Space felt massive.
By TNG Season 3 - right the way through to DS9 it felt that Starfleet was never more than a couple of days away. If you messed up someone would be along to mop up. Even Voyager felt like there could be some way of getting home right round the corner.
I think this is such a good point. There was something about season one (and two) that felt, well, not edgy as such, but definately raw and new. It felt as if the universe was big and unknown, and that unsual, dangerous things could happen. I enjoyed season three, but by the time the show reached it, things started to seem safer and more comfortable. There was a coldness and unease about the first two seasons, I felt.
seasons 1-2 may have been fresher, but they were also less polished. Sometimes with experience and maturity comes slightly less excitement, but the gains from the experience and maturity outweigh the losses.
But yes, plenty of good episodes were mixed in with the awful ones, so don't overlook them.
But yes, plenty of good episodes were mixed in with the awful ones, so don't overlook them.
I'm not so sure that's the case where Star Trek is concerned. When a production becomes polished, it locks itself into a rhythm and when it hits that rhythm the audience can begin to see where the stories are going on a weekly basis. Polish also leads to static shots of the main sets.
A production like Star Trek should always be challenging its own status quo.
I agree, STNG was a great show, my favorite....if there's one thing that bothers me about in retrospect its that it could have taken more chances, good SF has to be more dangerous.
RAMA
I didn't mean "mature" as synonymous with "boring" or "safe," I meant in terms of writing quality, actors/actresses getting a better feel for their roles, etc. Later seasons of TNG DID take chances in spite of folks now who see that it's not BSG or something and argue "ohhh, it's not dark or serialized, it's so boring!"
There's numerous examples, from BOBW, to "Family," to the Ensign Ro character, to Worf's "dishonor" storyline, etc.
I just meant that the writing by seasons 3-4 showed the wisdom of experience, and hard worked out some of the cheesiness of early TNG.
There's numerous examples, from BOBW, to "Family," to the Ensign Ro character, to Worf's "dishonor" storyline, etc.
I just meant that the writing by seasons 3-4 showed the wisdom of experience, and hard worked out some of the cheesiness of early TNG.
The reason it felt like an ep of TOS is because it shamelessly ripped off elements from The Corbomite Maneuver (powerful alien immobilized Enterprise and Ferengi), Arena (a confrontation between forces), and Balance of Terror (we finally see the Ferengi). I wish we had found out more about the T'Kon Empire though. They probably were rivals with the Iconian empire that developed the Gateways, first seen in Contagion. Makes sense there would have been other starfaring empires spanning the galaxy at different times in the past. So it's kind of a meh ep.
^Perhaps. But to so blatantly rip off those elements for one story in the first season was silly. Of course, even sillier was the horrendous second ep, The Naked Now, an inferior copy of The Naked Time, or the truly dreadful Home Soil, an even more shameless and useless ripoff of the superior Devil in the Dark.
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