Thoughts on Cheese

[Arpy]

Thinking about the next series, I find myself having this underlying dread stemming from one of the things that annoyed me most in Trek for decades. The cheesiness.

When I was a kid, I watched TNG and loved it. TNG seemed real to me. As I grew up, it didn't seem like Trek wanted to come along for the ride. At least not through most of the Berman era. ...Whoever wrote the freakasaurus line should have been executed, but I want to keep things light for this post. And the JJverse has revitalized things but it's stuck in the past. I look at nBSG and think, damn I wonder what a more adult Next Next Generation could have been like.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Sweet dreams are made of cheese
Who am I to diss a Brie?
I Cheddar the world and the Feta cheese
Everybody's looking for Stilton...

 

[Arpy]

Lol, I Maasdam Havarti read that five times!
Puns so Gouda Camembert it!
Some Munster puns right there.
My Pantysgawn.

 

[The Old Mixer]

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[JirinPanthosa]

I don't think Bermantrek is 'Kiddy'. It is light, accessible to mainstream, and not always intelligently written. But if you're going to call TNG cheesy and kiddy I can't imagine what network shows don't fall under that threshold.

They could make a more dark, gritty Trek, but why make Star Trek into something else when you can make an original dark, gritty scifi series, have creative freedom and not be bound by a half century of expectations?

 

[Arpy]

I wouldn't call TNG kiddy. It was an attempt at something more serious and it worked. Later stuff didn't attempt. They saw Roddenberry's optimism as unsophisticated and hammy. Lack of conflict meant TV censors rather than social progress. Like monarchist writers in 1600 seeing the future continuing being the same, only more so. It's in part why I didn't like Frank Herbert as a kid. Oh great, feudal families and selective breeding of ubermenschen thousands of years hence.

But dark, gritty? Is truth dark? There's difficulty to work through, but there's difference between showing process and aggrandizing tragedy. Expectations can change. I think they would for the better, if Trek produced more sophisticated, uplifting as ever, fare.

EDIT: Fuller mentioned there's discussion over whether characters should curse in the new series. Cursing isn't going to wow anybody in any meaningful way. Should they? Meh. Not any curse we use today any more than we use curses from three centuries ago (this is extremely important to me, realism wise), but also the scene from ST:IV...

SPOCK: Your use of language has altered since our arrival. It is currently laced with, ...shall I say, ...more colourful metaphors. 'Double dumb ass on you' ...and so forth.
KIRK: You mean profanity. That's simply the way they talk here. Nobody pays any attention to you if you don't swear every other word. You'll find it in all the literature of the period.
SPOCK: For example?
KIRK: Oh, the collective works of Jacqueline Susann. The novels of Harold Robbins.
SPOCK: Ah! ...'The giants'.

Aspirational. Alien. Loved it.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Swearing left and right doesn't add much. You don't notice lack of swearing, and when characters swear you just focus on the fact that it's different.

Kind of like HBO shows go out of their way to have every other scene in a strip club or brothel. It only adds anything in the contexts where nudity is relevant to the plot and comes off as "Hey look we're not censored isn't that cool?"

 

[Orac]

IMO the problem with Star Trek spin-off shows like DS9 and ENT is that they don't have enough cheese. TOS and TNG are eminently more rewatchable because they are cheesy.

 

[2takesfrakes]

The Classic Series is a meal, in itself, being so cheesy, hammy and corny. But it was only there to entertain and being entertaining was something this show still delivers on, if you let it. In fact, sometimes, it seems The Next Generation could've taken itself a little less seriously. However, TNG does not owe for fun! The spin-offs may have suffered from declining ratings and lessened freshness, but ... it's still a great comfort to know that so much material is present and available. Even with a new series on the horizon, it's still not enough STAR TREK, for me ...that's when I'll put TAS on.

 

[Lance]

I've always enjoyed episodes like TNG's "The Naked Now" as examples of how the show was capable of not taking itself too seriously, even if it rarely allowed itself to be too cheesy. To this day I still find myself being swept along with the cheese of it all.

 

[Arpy]

You guys can enjoy your cheese. But it's how we get stuff like this.

I'd like to be wowed as an adult the way TNG wowed me as a kid. I think the world would.

 

[galad2003]

I thought maybe this thread was about Porthos.

 

[2takesfrakes]

I know what it's like to want to really get into something, because you like the idea in general, but then you find out that it's campier than you expected and it might even seem not fair. Like going on a date with a smokin' hottie, then, you go to kiss her beautiful mouth AND ... she tastes like an ashtray, because she's a smoker! What kind of shit is THAT??? Why not just poke a guy with a cattle prod, whilst you're at it?! There's that feeling of let down at play, here. Well ...

All I can say to you, if you're really that concerned about the next series being cheesy, is ... I don't know ... look at the reboots, maybe. Think about that style. Those sensibilities. That's more where "Discovery" will be taking its cue from, in all likelihood, than from TOS. Then again, if "Discovery" goes camp ... hey ... these things happen! What can you do? Like I say, I get the disappointment, but sometimes when you love something, you gotta let it go. It's not fun, nobody wants it to be that way, it's just how it is.

 

[eyeresist]

I don't know if cheese is the right word. For me, TNG at its worst is when it's being funny, because I always get the feeling the show is waggling its eyebrows at the viewers and saying "Gosh, aren't we clever." The other problem was a certain stiffness which I think was partly from Roddenberry's utopian view, and partly the production style, which I would blame on the 1980s, except then you look at a show like Magnum PI, which was so dynamic and filmic by comparison. These issues persist through the later series.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

I think that's why I like DS9 as much as I do, less cheese more grit (though it still has it's moments here and there).