TOS Concepts Recycled In TNG
- Thread starter albion432
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I'm with him on the "Encounter at Farpoint" and "The Naked Now" similarities, but after that, he's reaching. The only thing "A Piece of the Action" and "The Big Goodbye" have in common are the crew wearing three piece suits and fedoras.
- Wasn't there that episode where Data totally commandeered the Enterprise like Spock did in The Menagerie?
As was "Devil's Due."
The entire concept is stolen from TOS. Picard = Admiral Kirk (while stealing "engage" from Pike...hrmm...Pike-ard?)...... Data = Xon/Spock, Riker/Troi = Will Decker/Ilia, Pulaski = McCoy....
The first few seasons, IMO in a good way, feel more like TOS. Everything from musical cues to costuming, even colourful choices in lighting design… all combine to invoke the original.
I still can’t believe they went as far as doing The Naked Time (to all intents and purposes) verbatim so early, but it does make a kind of a sense to do an episode that’s like that early in a science fiction show.
I still can’t believe they went as far as doing The Naked Time (to all intents and purposes) verbatim so early, but it does make a kind of a sense to do an episode that’s like that early in a science fiction show.
Rewatching "The Squire of Gothos" as an adult I'm hugely amused at how Trek's iconic character Q is just Trelane put through the Roddenberry Recycler™.
Having gangsters, mobsters and/or old-fashioned private investigators (again having things from '30s-'40s crime movies) is far from rehashing.
I believe Bob Justman had actually wanted "The Naked Time" to be the first broadcast episode of the original show, it is a weird idea to show characters acting out of character early on but he apparently had long really liked and wanted that.
I think done better.
I think he also made a pretty good case for "The Last Outpost" vs "Arena." However, "Lonely Among Us" vs "Wink of an Eye" and "The Turnabout Intruder" not so much, but even then I can see where he was going with it.
I remember wishing that they'd go back to Sigma Iotia II in TNG, as they ended the episode with as good of a lead-in to a sequel as Space Seed, and when I saw "The Big Goodbye," I knew then that they never would. And they never did.
Over all, I found the video to be entertaining and thought provoking.
I'd add the planet set to the list too, very reminiscent of TOS.
If you mean the sort of standard shots of the Enterprise orbiting a planet then yes, absolutely.
Yes, that too! But I was actually referring to the planet set as seen in "Haven" (in the holodeck), "Hide and Q," and "Skin of Evil." The simple desert looking set with the blank backdrop for the sky, colored differently for each planet. As I recall they stopped using that set after the first season or two and went almost exclusively with the "planet hell" set thereafter, which seemed to always be inside a cave.
"Unnatural Selection" recycled, but actually put thought into, the sci-fi trope of rapid aging (and how to undo it).
"The Schizoid Man" recycled "What are little girls made of" (put not a lumpy brain but its soul into a machine, somehow) seemed to have put more thought into the trope as well. I prefer those to their TOS counterparts, by far.
"The Schizoid Man" recycled "What are little girls made of" (put not a lumpy brain but its soul into a machine, somehow) seemed to have put more thought into the trope as well. I prefer those to their TOS counterparts, by far.
The number of times TOS pulled the "incorporeal ball of light life form that's superior to humans but 90% of the time in noble ways" in of itself was amusing. Given how Q was not an errant kid where mommy and daddy are green glowing incorporeal blobs to verbally tell the kid to "come in now and stop playing pets and with planets and to come home for supp--" ugh, that ending was pretty gaudy and cheesy back then and definitely has not aged gracefully*. Chalk up all the "Q" stories as being far superior to the TOS progenitor, even if "Gothos" was fairly robust up to the point that mommy and daddy appear.
* and yet wouldn't feel at all out of place if this was an episode of "Lost in Space". Trek was hailed as the first "adult sci-fi show"**, but after a few weeks we get that Trelane "come inside now and eat your green beans" scene... Like the tenth Doctor might say, "I'm so sorry, adults from early 1967"...
** in video form:
Both excellent points.
And:
https://stealthoptional.com/feature/5-reasons-q-is-one-of-the-greatest-star-trek-characters/
Congratulations on the published article! Where can I find more of your work?
Weren't both situations the same "copies of neural engrams and pathways" type of story?
I'd say Schizoid Man took just as much from Sargon as from Korby.
Thanks, but I wish I wrote that article!
I had read it one day and simply had to put up the link.Good point on Return to Tomorrow!
Not that I recall; haven't seen either in years... if they did talk of engrams then "The Ultimate Computer" could be a looser association too...
Yes well I wouldn't say that Q has survived the passage of time unscathed either. My kids don't find that much difference between Trelane and Q over the top performance except for the TNG special effects.
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