Star Trek Thread: Nemesis 2: Nemeses, etc. (Part 1)

My issue with Sisko As Clearly Best Captain is that I think Avery Brooks is a terrible actor. Dude is just hamming it up, constantly.

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.[quote=“km, post:182, topic:63”]
Avery Brooks is a terrible actor.
[/quote]

I haven’t seen a lot of DS9 yet, but I would have to agree with this. I can’t remember what the exact quote was, but he delivered a line so flat that it took me out the episode

this again.

I’m gonna approach this differently.

WTF does bad acting actually mean? What does good acting mean anymore? Cuz I know blatently bad acting and it’s not present in any major TV show, otherwise they wouldn’t be on TV.

Also hamming it up? Captain Cold on Flash/Legends of Tomorrow Hams it up, and it’s glorious. Nobody on any Star Trek save maybe Mudd comes close to anything like that. Avery Brooks reacts and matches step by step and steals scenes from classically Shakespearean Trained actors asked to act in exactly that mode, every cardassian. So… idk, I just don’t get what people are looking for in acting.

Avery Brooks is definitely an acquired taste… I can’t tell if he gets better as the series goes on, or you just get more accustomed to the idea that that is just sort of who the character is. I also feel like the episodes where Sisko functions more as a supporting character rather than protagonist tend to be a lot more effective. DS9 would be 1,000x better without the whole emissary subplot imo.

I would actually even say Sisko is my favorite Trek captain, but it’s because of the way he functions as a member of the crew. I actually like that he isn’t just this mysterious wunderkind who can solve every problem effortlessly, but is more or less just a lame dad with a really good heart. The emissary thing kind of ruins this and makes him into the most implausible of all the captains, which feels weird for Ds9 as it is otherwise pretty grounded. Plus “these aliens are basically gods” is the dumbest trek trope ever and it’s always bad (Fuck every appearance of Q ever)

As for the idealism vs realism thing of NG vs DS9, I get that it is part of the premise of DS9, but it still feels very idealistic. Maybe even more so, because the show is actually about how the values of the Federation can actually act as a force for good in the galaxy even in the face of major challenges, both from within starfleet and from evil aliens or whatever. I guess you can see how they are trying to interject some critique with the maquis and the section 31 subplots, but the stories are almost always set up so you conclude with some affirmation of whatever idealistic value those threats were supposedly challenging.

The whole conceit of Star Trek taking place in a future with a post-world peace Earth always seemed really unfair to me anyway, because in order to create conflict (which is obviously important in a tv show?) they end up having to just make the alien races flawed and imperfect so humans can be the benign colonists spreading their ideals to the rest of the universe. Like, it is great that OG trek was able to put a diverse cast on screen and show them getting along and not be defined by ethnic stereotypes, but they just push those ethnic stereotypes out onto the aliens, exaggerate them 10x while muddling them up a bit so you can’t tell exactly who they are meant to represent (are the klingons mongols, red chinese, or russians?).

Showing that starfleet and the federation have their own bullshit to deal with too just makes it feel a little more balanced. But the show is still obviously pretty interested in telling you that the ideals of the two are good, even if there are still problems w the execution–still pretty idealistic imo.

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those are definitely a part of it. I can typically get about 15 minutes into any given DS9 episode before “oh right, the emissary” or “oh right, the ferengi” and I’m done

I think it’s better they keep this vague or ambiguous. You can compare the Klingons to any of these real world conflicts plus retroactively compare current conflicts to old Star Trek episodes, thus keeping the series relevant. If they were perfect analogs Star Trek would just be world history repeating in space.

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There something to be said for what’s coming from a hard line sci-fi story slowly revealing that a culture’s religion is True, and can be proven.
Also that there is vice in Star Trek added so much.

I actually can’t wrap my head around why this would turn you off, that is a sum total of why it’s fascinating to me.

ya, it makes sense, but it’s also kind of poorly executed, so they just end up coming across as lazy generalizations about oriental despotism or whatever. The revised Klingons of NG and beyond are still kind of cartoonish, but they are more successful because they’re portrayed with a little more nuance… both to make their culture more unique and less an amalgam of various earth stereotypes, as well as giving individual characters more personality and narrative arcs

I actually heard that some Star Trek aliens are based on Tolkein’s fantasy races. Vulcan’s are supposed to be like elves, wise but detached from emotion. Klingon are like the dwarfs, usually living apart from other races and have like a warrior-based culture.

that makes sense!

I think this is where the Vulcans are important, and it maps onto @eddoe’s Tolkein parallelism - the Vulcans are better than us. We barely scraped enough of our civilization together to get to the point where the Vulcans deem us worthy of contact.

I also think the Klingons in Next Gen are basically fixed (the Ferengi are still like, yikes! levels of anti-semitism and the Romulans are iffy as an unenlightened ethnic offshoot of Vulcan). The episodes where Worf restores his birthright are the crown jewel of TNG, Borg be damned. Worf becomes comfortable with his human-raised klingon-born identity and acts with the strength of both against Klingon racists. Picard plays a support role in a culture that has a wholly different value system but does so with grace and patience. It’s really incredible how well it holds up over twenty years later and maps onto any real culture/identity/national issue.

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Something about Avery Brooks’s acting really works for me. Its not naturalistic and while closer to a shakespearean register, it’s not that either. I don’t feel like he makes the wrong choices in his acting, but he does look for interesting ones. Definitely an acquired taste.

Interestingly, while watching Luke Cage all I could think about was how much Mike Colter’s acting reminded me of Avery Brooks. Turns out colter went to school where Brooks taught acting.

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this explains so, so, much.

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More than ethnic overlaps or anything, I feel that’s just a general Romulan problem as a whole, all they seem to have going on is just being Bad Vulcans. Their TOS debut episode was a great episode, but after that they just seem really fucking boring to me.

I always read Romulans the Japan to Vulacans as Chinese…

haven’t seen any ds9 since the actual '90s but i just recall sisko being wry as fuck for an authority figure

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I watched the TOS episode Patterns of Force last night. Spock is kind of a badass for not responding to torture. It’s funny how likable he is even though he doesn’t think highly of humans.

Also saw the TNG episode The Host. A fairly decent episode though I doubt you’'d see it on any top lists. Dr. Crusher is an underrated character. I like to think of her as the Liz Lemon of the Enterprise. Picard is Jack Donaghy.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH

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Look it’s very simple

Liz - B’ellana and Barclay if you combine them in a transporter accident
Jack - Dukat
Tracy - Q
Jenna - Lwaxana
Kenneth - Neelix
Pete - O’Brien
Frank - Nog
Toofer - Geordi
Grizz - Riker
Dot Com -Worf

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