Watching some random scene from Enterprise with Archer and T’Pol are talking in the ready room
My partner comes in and observes that they think they could become a couple. After a beat this is followed by the question ‘Can they bang?’
We had a lot to talk about.
Show them A Night in Sickbay
Someones asked Frakes during a recent AMA why the CG in Picard and Disco were sort of all over the map in terms of quality and consistency:
Frakes: I can only speculate here, but I’m guessing that the variation in VFX work came down to money and time. Almost certainly, different VFX vendors were involved in different episodes, and didn’t necessarily have the time or the ability to mimic what had been done before by others. Or maybe there was a time crunch and they just didn’t have the time or the money. On The Original Series, I think there was one primary VFX house doing most of the work for that series. That’s rare if not nonexistent today!
(source)
We have reached Season 5 in our viewing of TNG. Redemption is a mixed bag finale/opener I think. One of the better Klingon episodes, plenty of good emotional stuff to latch onto. And other than the cliffhanger, it just doesn’t seem particularly suited to being a finale. Though I like Worf’s progression here.
Then we watched Darmok, which is fine. One of the most cited episodes of TNG for sure. And maybe I’m just in a hater mood this week, but I kept thinking that of all the TNG episodes Darmok is maybe the most XKCD-brained of them all. Maybe an association created by hanging out with too many humanities professors.
of the heavily memed tng episodes, i think i was most pleasantly surprised by the inner light. plus it is one of the few picard-centered episodes that actually seems to impact his character at all, i found it really charming how they came up with a handful of ways to call back to that episode throughout the rest of the series despite the narrative constraints of early 90’s syndicated episodic television
Ever since it was pointed out to me, I can’t watch inner light without noticing that most of the times picard plays the flute, it is a pair of stunt hands that don’t look anything like patrick stewart’s hands holding the flute up to his mouth
Whoaaa
Patrick stewart could not convincingly pantomime knowing how to play a flute so they got someone who could to handle the fingering
still think it’s kinda fucked up that the tos remaster stuck around forever. like it was absolutely a wild success in that TOS had not been in regular syndication for years back then and it has basically stuck around ever since and a lot of it was done very tastefully and it’s not like star wars where the original version was not even for sale but still kind of a mild bummer while also being kind of an interesting time capsule in that it is now double dated with the best cgi 2005 had to offer and i mean i don’t want them to do BETTER cgi now so whatever. i guess i’m mad that it worked kind of.
I have similar feelings about it honestly. But I will say that I’m still mad at the tos remaster over this
I just love the original effects in this episode SO MUCH MORE. The hand doesn’t look as cool and spectral in the second one!!
I always get bummed out when they show that one beautiful matte painting in the end credits while the rest of them got replaced. But I still watch it all the time.
We finally watched it! Funnily enough one of the better episodes of the show so far. I love how Phlox goes full space-Freud and just asks Archer when he last got laid out of nowhere about 15 minutes in
Congrats Patton on being a Star Trek.
Is he that short or is new Spock standing on a box?
Carol Kane’s on this show too!?
New Trek has entered the weird cultural blind spot zone that like CBS sitcoms live in.
Am some way into the 3rd season of Enterprise and have some general thoughts about the show as I near the end of the Xindi arc.
The cast is weird since half are pretty good and the other are underutilised or just add nothing.
- Archer: Strong all around but not the most compelling captain. Probably the biggest strength is being a more relatable captain on an ethical level since he gets quite a lot of things wrong or make some pretty dicey decisions without really being able to appeal to the comfort of the Federation. The show as a whole has a bit more of a NASA/military flavour but I think Bakula strikes a good balance. I think he’d be better with a more diverse core cast.
- Trip: A lot of angry but grew on me. Another character who is individually okay but is one of three white guys who gets the lion’s share of the lines.
- T’Pol: Generally pretty good as an exploration of what the first Vulcan on a long-term post on a human ship would be like. I think she, Trip and Archer are a bit too transparently a Spock/Bones/Kirk remix. Too often in her Ripley-at-the-end-of-Alien cosplay. Just faces the same problems as Seven does on Voyager.
- Reed: Strongly unlikable. Secret tory. Reed just comes across as a military man resenting being on a non-military operation. His pessimism and belligerence just make him out to be a hostile downer a lot of the time and he doesn’t really grow past it.
- Mayweather: Very wooden. Ends up very rarely getting any kind of screen time. I wonder if they just didn’t feel like the actor could hack it after a while or if he got busy with other stuff. Feels bad.
- Hoshi: Pretty good but is the recipient of a lot of creeps. Her role kinda gets junked once the universal translator just works in all situations. Again, I wonder if a lot of the more minor characters get this treatment because there trying to simulate some of the vibes from TOS. I think sometimes this shows long-running arcs just get in the way of giving people space to have their own episodes/arcs.
- Phlox: Best character. Probably the only one that gives enough regular ‘classic Trek’ vibes while also being regularly engaged with ethics and fun Denobula stuff.
Other thoughts:
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some of the pre-rendered establishing CG shots are astonishingly poor quality, especially when little people are walking around. I get that this would have worked on a television circa 2003 but weird to watch now.
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The phrase ‘[not] in the Vulcan database’ does a lot of heavy lifting in the first two seasons.
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Shipwreck and imprisonment feel like they make up about half of the episodes. Despite being the first time Starfleet has gone out, the show is really lacking enough episodes that really dive into the culture of other worlds. They kind of drop the interesting problems first contact presents after a while.
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The Xindi are a neat idea. They had to sacrifice most of the third season to episode by episode continuity but it is a lot more interesting than the temporal Cold War.
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It feels like the show is trying to say something about the Iraq war and resulting problems via Archer’s ethical blips (torture, killing innocents, made permissive in the name of destroying weapons of mass destruction). I think it just has to get less Star Trek-y having a military squad on board with another straight edge white man supporting character (hilariously he and Reed fight over being the least likeable character). I think they were going for what a transitional Starfleet would look like between ‘our time’ and the 23rd century but I think it loses something.
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The show still gives me a very comfy feeling which I think is what’s carrying me through. The switch to a more beat-driven theme song in the third season is actually helping the song grow on me.
Favorite episodes so far:
Realm of Fear really impressed me first time I watched TNG and it still stands out as a favorite upon my second time through. Broccoli episodes are always great I think. But I love that it seems to be born from a question about how someone in the universe might feel about a totally invisible norm. I’ve always felt disturbed by transporters for similar reasons, so it was a fun identifying with a character on that point.
This was the episode of TNG that absolutely terrified me as a kid. I really love the notion that transporters are so thoroughly researched and understood and commonplace that the idea that there could be something in there is completely laughable, and despite their better natures, everyone in the crew really wants to reason to laugh at Broccoli.