One of the reasons Ro Laren was brought onto TNG was that the characters were considered bland.
The overblown cliche of "gritty DS9" and "bland" TNG
- Thread starter sonak
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True. That is a huge difference.
And I do agree that in general the crew on the Enterprise should get along better in general for just that reason. However, I still think even on a ship like the Enterprise, you'd be faced with situations where people on the staff simply wouldn't agree. These are smart, ambitious people with minds of their own yet I find they come across as complacent and happy to fall in line much of the time.
And what's a shame, IMHO, is that the hierarchical structure aboard the ship has huge potential for making disagreement an interesting problem at times. If, say, the first Office disagrees with the Captain often and - due to his rank - has to accept that his decisions are overruled, that can't be easy to take. How do you deal with that?
The interesting in my view is that - on a certain level - people in Trek's future might find something like that as harder or maybe even harder to deal with than people today. As Picard often states, people don't work to accumulate money or goods, they work to better themselves. In essence, their work is their calling. And what if you're finding a hard time realizing that calling?
I mean, I'm really not calling for the TNG crew to get into a fist fight or something
but I'd just loved to have seen more heated (intelligent) debate, more opposing points of view (the Federation is vast - there's got to be many different points of view), and just more dealing with the situation in general - they're on this ship and - even though it's big and comfortable - essentially crammed into a tight space with lots of other people for long periods of time. Isn't that sometimes hard to deal with?
I find TNG enjoyable to watch now and then but it really doesn't do much for me largely because, as mentioned above, I don't find it THAT interesting most of the time.
True. That is a huge difference.
And I do agree that in general the crew on the Enterprise should get along better in general for just that reason. However, I still think even on a ship like the Enterprise, you'd be faced with situations where people on the staff simply wouldn't agree. These are smart, ambitious people with minds of their own yet I find they come across as complacent and happy to fall in line much of the time.
And what's a shame, IMHO, is that the hierarchical structure aboard the ship has huge potential for making disagreement an interesting problem at times. If, say, the first Office disagrees with the Captain often and - due to his rank - has to accept that his decisions are overruled, that can't be easy to take. How do you deal with that?
The interesting in my view is that - on a certain level - people in Trek's future might find something like that as harder or maybe even harder to deal with than people today. As Picard often states, people don't work to accumulate money or goods, they work to better themselves. In essence, their work is their calling. And what if you're finding a hard time realizing that calling?
I mean, I'm really not calling for the TNG crew to get into a fist fight or something
but I'd just loved to have seen more heated (intelligent) debate, more opposing points of view (the Federation is vast - there's got to be many different points of view), and just more dealing with the situation in general - they're on this ship and - even though it's big and comfortable - essentially crammed into a tight space with lots of other people for long periods of time. Isn't that sometimes hard to deal with?I find TNG enjoyable to watch now and then but it really doesn't do much for me largely because, as mentioned above, I don't find it THAT interesting most of the time.
TNG wasn't about character conflict, though, and it was less about character generally than DS9. It was about exploration, moralising, and an ideal future. TNG wasn't trying to be DS9, and vice versa is also applicable.
However, when TNG did do episodes similar or prototypical of DS9 - "The Wounded", "Chain of Command" - they were superb. I'd hold up "Chain of Command" as one of the all-time best Star Trek telemovies... right up there with "The Way of the Warrior."
Indeed. TNG and DS9 are more complimentary - and more interrelated - than any other two Star Trek shows.
However, when TNG did do episodes similar or prototypical of DS9 - "The Wounded", "Chain of Command" - they were superb. I'd hold up "Chain of Command" as one of the all-time best Star Trek telemovies... right up there with "The Way of the Warrior."
Indeed. TNG and DS9 are more complimentary - and more interrelated - than any other two Star Trek shows.
Justtoyourleft said:
And what's a shame, IMHO, is that the hierarchical structure aboard the ship has huge potential for making disagreement an interesting problem at times. If, say, the first Office disagrees with the Captain often and - due to his rank - has to accept that his decisions are overruled, that can't be easy to take. How do you deal with that?
The interesting in my view is that - on a certain level - people in Trek's future might find something like that as harder or maybe even harder to deal with than people today. As Picard often states, people don't work to accumulate money or goods, they work to better themselves. In essence, their work is their calling. And what if you're finding a hard time realizing that calling?
I mean, I'm really not calling for the TNG crew to get into a fist fight or something
I find TNG enjoyable to watch now and then but it really doesn't do much for me largely because, as mentioned above, I don't find it THAT interesting most of the time.
I'm a niner, yet its been a while since I've seen either show. If I see Trek these days its normally Enterprise or Voyager. Yet I can't recall Picard in his ready room doing what Kirk did. Bringing the senior staff together so they could debate those options and take different positions openly without damaging crew cohesion.
Because the staff on DS9 served different masters even to extra legal ones in Commander Eddington's case or Section 31 there was greater conflict among the known crew.
DS9 was about as gritty as a bedroom community in Germantown Maryland on a Sunday afternoon. It was a stab at the sort of adolescent-targeted pop culture cynicism that a young friend of mine skeptically refers to as "darkity-dark-dark."
I agree. And I think that not only did they come across as unrealistic because of this - I think this is also where the charge of smug superiority comes from.
That crew (and Picard in particular) comes across as smugly superior, mainly because they always turn out to be right...and the alien of the week always turns out to be wrong...and Thankful to Have Learned A Valuable Lesson From Our Heroes.
Frankly, it made me wanna hurl.
Because the problem was that alot of the solutions to problems were rather contrived. Very rarely did Our Heroes actually have to REALLY get their hands dirty and make some hard moral choices. And NEVER did they make a decision they they simply had to 'learn to live with' because the ends justified the means. Never did they make a decision based on personal motives rather than professional ones - shoot, we didn't even know what their PERSONAL motivations might *be*! Pretty much all decisions and all outcomes were without regret...and on TNG, the ends as well as the means were pretty much by the book.
Most of the time, it was just too easy. Too squeaky clean.
This, in my view, made the show very one-dimensional. I think part of the reason why DS9 is considered grittier (and yes, I believe it is) is because we learn alot about the core motivations and values of those characters. Values that have nothing whatever to do with Starfleet policy or anything they learned at the Academy. Indeed, many of the characters in DS9 are not even IN Starfleet, and are not bound by the same value system. That's what makes it so interesting and 3-dimensional. On DS9 there is not one set of rules - not one set of values upon which all characters agree.
And so, take away Starfleet policy and what do we really know about what *truly* motivates the TNG characters? For me? I have no idea, except for maybe the character of Worf.
Everyone else is a walking, talking Starfleet manual.
Well, I addressed part of this above. But I agree. And once again, this feeds into the smug superiority thing too.
The message is very clear: The Federation Way ALWAYS equals "The Right Way".
On DS9, that's not the case.
One thing that I find quite interesting is that we see alot of people holding up Worf in this thread as the symbol of diversity. And indeed he was - on TNG.
But how did he look on DS9?
Many DS9 fans well tell you that by contract to the existing characters, he was dull, boring, and too much of a by-the-book stick-in-the-mud.
On TNG he represented diversity by comparison to the other characters. But when you stuck him on DS9 he instantly became 'the establishment' against which many of the other characters were fighting.
Well, that did happen once. But only because there just so happened to be a certain Vulcan Ambassador onboard suffering from Bendii Syndrome!Justtoyourleft said:
I mean, I'm really not calling for the TNG crew to get into a fist fight or something
DS9's rep came mainly from episodes like Duet and In the Pale Moonlight which demonstrated how elastic notions of right and wrong can be, and had the guts to show the main characters, not just some disposable alien of the week, grappling with these issues and not necessarily coming out of it smelling like roses. But Picard and crew always came through squeaky-clean. They could do their jobs without any lasting moral compromise which frankly always struck me as hogwash.
Stuff like a Klingon killing another Klingon for the usual Klingon reasons, or someone having "family issues" (does anyone on Star Trek NOT have "family issues"?) is far too mundane to really shake up the audience or elicit anything stronger than a yawn.
And frankly, no, the episode "Ethics" does NOT ring a bell.
I guess it was so boring I've completely blanked it out. But I can still remember small details of the best DS9 episodes - they really have stayed with me for years.
No, BSG is dreary. And truly gritty in a way DS9 never was. Just look at the ratings to see whether people want that.
Stuff like a Klingon killing another Klingon for the usual Klingon reasons, or someone having "family issues" (does anyone on Star Trek NOT have "family issues"?) is far too mundane to really shake up the audience or elicit anything stronger than a yawn.
And frankly, no, the episode "Ethics" does NOT ring a bell.
I guess it was so boring I've completely blanked it out. But I can still remember small details of the best DS9 episodes - they really have stayed with me for years.No, BSG is dreary. And truly gritty in a way DS9 never was. Just look at the ratings to see whether people want that.
I find it impossible to compare DS9 and TNG. The two shows are as different as night and day. The only thing I can say about both shows is that they were excellent at creating the show that they were trying to create; neither is a "bad" show. It comes down entirely to personal preference which show you find better, and I for one love both shows equally for very different reasons.
How's that for being a fence sitter?
How's that for being a fence sitter?
I don't agree. A show can be deark and gritty -- truly dark and gritty, a la The Wire or Battlestar Galactica -- and that doesn't mean that it's being cynical about healthy relationships or optimism. It means that it's reflecting one particular point of view, one particular aspect of the human experience. Calling a dark and gritty drama cynical about healthy relationships is like calling a comedy a dishonest portrayal of human pain; it's not that, it's just that it's one specific style of storytelling with its own conceits.
For the record, I believe that it's more than possible to tell intelligent, realistic, optimistic stories about people who are pretty well-rounded individuals. If you want an example of that, the new series of Doctor Who from Great Britain, starring Christopher Eccleston in its first series and David Tennant in the subsequent series, is a prime example of how to tell the types of stories that TNG wanted to tell -- stories about good, decent people having adventures in a world of optimism and hope -- while correcting many of the flaws that non-TNG fans have identified in the show.
There's no such thing as an "objective" POV. Everything's subjective. The question is whether or not the series accurately reflects facts (i.e., doesn't set up straw man situations), accurately reflects human behavior, and/or accurately represents multiple points of view.
What the heck does that mean? And who determines what is or is not "philosophically sound?"
The universe should be depicted honestly. That doesn't mean that every episode should depict every facet to the universe. But it means that the depictions of the universe, while they may reflect certain conceits -- optimism in Doctor Who, sorrow and pain in Battlestar Galactica -- should still be recognizably honest.
What does that mean? It means that the political situations encountered by the characters should not always be contrived so as to make the "correct" moral choice easy and/or obvious. There are situations where the "correct" moral choice is... but there are many others where it is not. It also means that while the characters may be depicted as fundamentally good people who usually make the right choice, they shouldn't come across as being two-dimensionally perfect.
Temis the Vorta said:
And frankly, no, the episode "Ethics" does NOT ring a bell.
Worf breaks his spine. He wants to die, but he could continue to live as an invalid with partial recovery. Other doctor comes onboard and gives him risky, untested alternative that will give either full recovery or kill him and he accepts. Subplot about Worf wanting Riker to help him in assisted suicide.
That's about it.
I've only seen the first part of BSG's miniseries, but it struck me as dull and cliched. Your standard TV broken family where everyone's bitter, a jerky woman pilot, and a rambling commander who delivers a haphazard speech about how, heck, maybe we deserve to be wiped out because we're not nice people. Dark, maybe. Interesting, maybe not.
Korczynski said:
It's not so much that TNG was perfect and without conflict - however the basis is more a personal opinion. Of The Great Bird of the Galaxy.
And when the Great Bird spoke, his opinion carried a lot of weight.
Unless you think the Great Bird was a myth? You'd be mythtaken
No, he exists. And I have pictures.
Anyway, what I want to see (and most scifis still fall short of this) is characters who are flawed without it being completely over the top. Personally, I like B5 better than DS9, and I do like TNG. But it seems that there are two extremes. Either you get a goody goody boy scout piously whining about the ethics of stepping on ants, or you get alcoholics and drug addicts and neo fascists vieing for control. Why can't you have someone for whom space exploration is more-or-less a job? Have the guy write sonnets in between fixing warp drives. Or a person who's a part of the crew but has radically different ideas about ethics than everybody else. Or have a single parent trying to become a doctor while raising kids. You can do a lot of realistic stuff without having to make a ZOMG-Dark-Gritty show or a Kumbaya show. Most people aren't on either extreme. They try to be good, but they fuck up -- not because they're doing someing majorly bad, just because they're human. Give me realism, not ZOMG-Dark-Grittyism.
