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It does certainly seem to be that in TNG and DS9 too – if you're specifically not command, or helm, or medical/science, you're going to be yellow.
What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?
- Thread starter Amasov
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It does certainly seem to be that in TNG and DS9 too – if you're specifically not command, or helm, or medical/science, you're going to be yellow.
There is in fact a perfect entry point: when the Kumari was destroyed in the Romulan drone arc. Shran did not need to return to Andoria when the arc was completed; he could have stayed on Enterprise and recovered there. Would have made for a nice contrast with Trip leaving for Columbia at the end of the same episode.
Year of Hell is the ultimate peak of the stupidity around Seven's costuming.
She spends literally half the episode reminiscing about how much being a part of the crew has changed her/meant to her *and* things in general are so bad that even *Neelix* is in uniform, yet there's not the slightest hint that the uniform is even an option for her.
I don't think she necessarily needed to wind up in uniform, but given how her stories were almost always about discovering not just who she is but also her place in society, the subject of being an official Starfleet crewman/officer absolutely should have come up, and done so well before the end of the series. If the writers wanted to say that she chose not to be a uniformed officer and then explore what that means for her place on the ship that would've been just as fine as actually finally putting her in uniform. But even then, she should also have been moving steadily away from the catsuit (which was all about her Borg identity) as she became more and more comfortable in her humanity.
She spends literally half the episode reminiscing about how much being a part of the crew has changed her/meant to her *and* things in general are so bad that even *Neelix* is in uniform, yet there's not the slightest hint that the uniform is even an option for her.
I don't think she necessarily needed to wind up in uniform, but given how her stories were almost always about discovering not just who she is but also her place in society, the subject of being an official Starfleet crewman/officer absolutely should have come up, and done so well before the end of the series. If the writers wanted to say that she chose not to be a uniformed officer and then explore what that means for her place on the ship that would've been just as fine as actually finally putting her in uniform. But even then, she should also have been moving steadily away from the catsuit (which was all about her Borg identity) as she became more and more comfortable in her humanity.
Controversial opinions? Okay.
TNG is vastly overrated.
The Borg were drab and uninteresting prior to their soft reboot as cyborg zombies in First Contact. The Borg Queen gave the Borg much-needed personality.
Trek is at its best when it involves morality plays, character studies, and interpersonal conflict. Trek is at its worst when it leans into technobabble and makes clumsy attempts at hard sci-fi.
TNG is vastly overrated.
The Borg were drab and uninteresting prior to their soft reboot as cyborg zombies in First Contact. The Borg Queen gave the Borg much-needed personality.
Trek is at its best when it involves morality plays, character studies, and interpersonal conflict. Trek is at its worst when it leans into technobabble and makes clumsy attempts at hard sci-fi.
I agree with most of this, but I don't think TNG is overrated. It does have a dated quality to its filming though, especially in quieter scenes. There are still many classic episodes worth (re)watching.
I never had a problem with the evolution of the Borg. Makes sense they would start from one assimilation, accidental or otherwise, that got totally out of control. And in TNG it wasn't as if we saw as many Borg as we eventually did in Voyager. We saw fragments of the Collective. Borg Queen is retconny, but it works.
You're right on the money. Star Trek isn't hard sci-fi, and it never has been. YouTuber Rowan J. Coleman has a great video on the subject. Personally, I roll with the technobabble.
As for the Borg, I am conflicted. Seen purely as a threat, a menace, I think they were far more chilling in BOBW. A faceless force of the collective you couldn't reason with, that didn't even understand why species would resist assimilation. An opponent that not only didn't agree with concepts such as death, resistance, or self-determination, but basically didn't even recognise such concepts. However, the number of stories you can tell with such a foe is really limited, and in that sense I can understand that if they wanted to keep using them in the future (e.g. in FC) they had to give Picard 'someone' to play against (the Queen), even though that fundamentally altered the concept of the Borg.
I agree that Trek is not hard sci-fi. As for technobabble, I think there's good and bad technobabble. Good technobabble never becomes a major point of the story, but simply conveys the impression we're dealing with trained specialists here who really know their stuff (and sometimes will communicate in specialist language simply because it's far more efficient). Bad technobabble is used to occlude that the scriptwriters don't know or want to envisage a solution either, and simply say: 'look they're solving the problem with something really technical and sciency, ok? But we can't be bothered by thinking up something actually clever so we'll just say flooding the anomaly with techbabblion particles will make it disappear!'
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TNG is really fucking old by now. It's 35 years old. Have you ever tried watching a cop show, or a Western, or some drama television show from 35 years ago? TNG holds up amazing.
One thing that definitely helped me regarding TNG (and TOS) - is treating it somewhat like a stage play. Because the dialogue and the visuals not always match up perfectly. They're talking about aliens and their strange life cycles starting as larvae - and they're portrayed by humans with a bumpy nose. They're talking about space battles with heavy cruisers over distances of thousands of kilometres - and you're seeing the same reused vfx shots with a Klingon BoP.
But the stories and dialogue are often fucking amazing, the best ST has ever produced. And it's greatly helped by the acting talent, which is better than a corny SF show has any right to have.
Hell, if I had one wish for all of new Trek - I wish they would stop trying to make an "action show" happen, and return straight to drama, with vfx supporting the stories, instead of the stories leading to vfx heavy fight scenes. Just realize how very, very few actual fight scenes are in the totality of TNG & TOS, and that despite these two shows being (comparatively) chock full of vfx. And when there's are there (like Kirk fighting shirtless or Worf palm-punching someone) they're usually in the middle of the episode (!!) and the resolution is fine through some talking stuff (instead of winning the fight being the solution).
Basically, TOS & TNG often is about "problem solving" instead of antagonistic conflicts. And quite no other Trek (or SF) show managed to capture that so perfectly.
One thing that definitely helped me regarding TNG (and TOS) - is treating it somewhat like a stage play. Because the dialogue and the visuals not always match up perfectly. They're talking about aliens and their strange life cycles starting as larvae - and they're portrayed by humans with a bumpy nose. They're talking about space battles with heavy cruisers over distances of thousands of kilometres - and you're seeing the same reused vfx shots with a Klingon BoP.
But the stories and dialogue are often fucking amazing, the best ST has ever produced. And it's greatly helped by the acting talent, which is better than a corny SF show has any right to have.
Hell, if I had one wish for all of new Trek - I wish they would stop trying to make an "action show" happen, and return straight to drama, with vfx supporting the stories, instead of the stories leading to vfx heavy fight scenes. Just realize how very, very few actual fight scenes are in the totality of TNG & TOS, and that despite these two shows being (comparatively) chock full of vfx. And when there's are there (like Kirk fighting shirtless or Worf palm-punching someone) they're usually in the middle of the episode (!!) and the resolution is fine through some talking stuff (instead of winning the fight being the solution).
Basically, TOS & TNG often is about "problem solving" instead of antagonistic conflicts. And quite no other Trek (or SF) show managed to capture that so perfectly.
Prime TOS, please reboot in the Prime universe after SNW
Same on agreeing with most of it except the bit about TNG. I've been dipping into that show recently after a decade long break and it's still maybe the best of all Star Treks for me... Maybe... or maybe it's still TOS.
For me it's DS9 and TOS. Voyager brings up the rear despite all its flaws.
Of the 90s Trek, TNG is the undisputed leader in the "I physically can't sit through this episode" competition.
One too many recitals?
TOS and DS9 are peak Trek for me with TNG in third.
For me, the final scene and the cast signatures credits in TUC. I was grateful the cinema kept the lights down until I could compose myself. It still gets me even today.
Berman was the wrong person to run Star Trek. He held the shows back from what they could've become and eventually his poor decisions nearly killed the franchise.
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• Picard's understated final line, "Five card stud, nothing wild. And the sky's the limit", at the very end of TNG: "All Good Things".
• The whole Riker/Troi/Picard scene in the kitchen in PIC: "Nepenthe". You can't fake that warmth that the actors feel towards each other as people, and it just flows over into their performances. Utterly, utterly sold on them being friends and colleagues for decades. This, and the final scene in PIC: "Et In Arcadia Ego, Part 2" between Picard and Data, mean I'm prepared to forgive Picard season one a lot of its flaws, because what it got right it did beautifully.
• Rather odd one this – I saw a video on Youtube many years ago of the Enterprise's destruction over Genesis in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock overlaid with the track "Now We Are Free" from Gladiator, and it matched beautifully. Obviously it's a deliberately evocative piece of music, but it makes the Enterprise's demise that much more grander and emotional than what we saw on screen.
I think Berman ultimately was very bad for Trek. He is also by all accounts an asshole, borderline sexual harasser (though not as bad as Roddenberry) and a raging homophobe. He made really bad production choices regarding things like the use of music in episodes as well.
That said, early TNG was a total mess until he took over the reins fully in the third season of TNG. Without Berman, Michael Piller may never have become showrunner, which means TNG isn't stabilized. It also means no DS9 and no VOY. It probably means the semi-stable writer's crew of the Berman Era (Moore, Braga, Shankar, Echevarria, etc.) is never established.
The best option would probably be if Berman was fired/handed over the reins some time around 1994 or so.
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Not sure that is a bad thing.
It's a shame that Ira Steven Behr and Ron Moore couldn't run the whole franchise after about 1993. Behr and Moore were clearly more daring and creative than Berman and Braga.
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