Red Letter Media

[frozenrunner]

I'm another one who liked Conspiracy. It's honestly not a great episode, but nothing else in TNG felt anything like it.

I genuinely do not understand why they didn't/couldn't find more to do with that concept. I know there was some extended universe novel that retconned the parasites as related to the Trill, but fuck that. Give me an insane alien conspiracy infiltrating Starfleet in the actual show, or at least mention it again.

 

[Preferred Penne]

I know that Star Trek Online did some storyline with the parasites, but I can't be bothered to remember all the details.

 

[NOT Sword Fighter Super]

I wish the revived people in The Neutral Zone had more of a positive impact on the story.

Also, do you think that episode is where Matt Groening got the idea for the plot of Futurama?

 

[Mola Ram]

I wish the revived people in The Neutral Zone had more of a positive impact on the story.

Also, do you think that episode is where Matt Groening got the idea for the plot of Futurama?

The "frozen man from the past (present) waking up in the future" is an incredibly hoary plot device.

 

[Travoltron]

Conspiracy should have been the season finale instead of the very lame "The Neutral Zone".
Somewhere, I read that the original plan was that bluegilll bug aliens from Conspiracy would have been the harbingers of the bigbad teased in "The Neutral Zone" that eventually became the Borg.

The original idea for the bigbad was that they would also be an insectoid race, called The Hive or something. But they didn't have the budget to do convincing insect costumes, so they changed them to cyborgs and used the same hivemind concept for the Borg.

 

[Stab You in the Back]

I wish the revived people in The Neutral Zone had more of a positive impact on the story.

Also, do you think that episode is where Matt Groening got the idea for the plot of Futurama?

I mean... Futurama literally had an 80s guy episode.

 

[draggs]

The "frozen man from the past (present) waking up in the future" is an incredibly hoary plot device.

Never mind that Star Trek: Picard definitively proves that Picard was bullshitting about humanity moving past greed, poverty, want, hatred etc. Dude was just masturbating in front of the Neanderthals knowing they couldnt prove him wrong.

 

[NOT Sword Fighter Super]

Conspiracy should have been the season finale instead of the very lame "The Neutral Zone".
Somewhere, I read that the original plan was that bluegilll bug aliens from Conspiracy would have been the harbingers of the bigbad teased in "The Neutral Zone" that eventually became the Borg.

The original idea for the bigbad was that they would also be an insectoid race, called The Hive or something. But they didn't have the budget to do convincing insect costumes, so they changed them to cyborgs and used the same hivemind concept for the Borg.

I think maybe the mysterious "signal" that was sent out by the queen bug or whatever before Picard and Riker exploded it were supposed to be tied to the fate of the disappeared neutral zone adjacent outposts in Neutral Zone.

That's probably why Conspiracy came first. I agree though, aside from the return of the Romulans that episode is very anticlimactic.

 

[knightlautrec]

Never mind that Star Trek: Picard definitively proves that Picard was bullshitting about humanity moving past greed, poverty, want, hatred etc. Dude was just masturbating in front of the Neanderthals knowing they couldnt prove him wrong.

I think that its really telling to the cynicism of modern writers that they cannot embrace the idea that humanity moved past that in ST and have to add in a bunch of horribleness over Earth and Humans. Mostly I suspect because it doesn't go with their narrative. If we have no racism or progressive stack than white people aren't the bad guys and non whites aren't automatically the under dog stepped on by 'oppression'. They're just like everyone else. It would require making characters nuanced and not just cardboards cut outs and I know that's too much work for modern idiotic writers when slapping a label on them is easier.

 

[haurchefant]

I think that its really telling to the cynicism of modern writers that they cannot embrace the idea that humanity moved past that in ST and have to add in a bunch of horribleness over Earth and Humans. Mostly I suspect because it doesn't go with their narrative. If we have no racism or progressive stack than white people aren't the bad guys and non whites aren't automatically the under dog stepped on by 'oppression'. They're just like everyone else. It would require making characters nuanced and not just cardboards cut outs and I know that's too much work for modern idiotic writers when slapping a label on them is easier.

Yeah well when your writing team consists solely of people who slam their knees together and piss themselves every time they see a white person

 

[stuffandthings]

Yeah well when your writing team consists solely of people who slam their knees together and piss themselves every time they see a white person

Is that why they looked so awful on the red carpet? Because they literally cannot have a mirror in their house?

 

[frozenrunner]

I think that its really telling to the cynicism of modern writers that they cannot embrace the idea that humanity moved past that in ST and have to add in a bunch of horribleness over Earth and Humans. Mostly I suspect because it doesn't go with their narrative. If we have no racism or progressive stack than white people aren't the bad guys and non whites aren't automatically the under dog stepped on by 'oppression'. They're just like everyone else. It would require making characters nuanced and not just cardboards cut outs and I know that's too much work for modern idiotic writers when slapping a label on them is easier.

I mean, the space communist utopia that Gene Roddenberry envisioned was autistic as fuck, but you're not wrong.

 

[haurchefant]

Is that why they looked so awful on the red carpet? Because they literally cannot have a mirror in their house?

Unironically yes self loathing leads to people refusing to take care of themselves and therefore they can't clean up for a nice event

 

[Drag-on Knight 91873]

I mean, the space communist utopia that Gene Roddenberry envisioned was autistic as fuck, but you're not wrong.

Part of what made Star Trek fun was trying to figure out how to get to Star Trek times. The most obvious evidence is trying to make technology close to what was shown on the show such as the communicator, touch screen interfaces, teleconferencing, and .mp3 and 4 files. The second is trying to get to the color blindness (but not full alien blindness) depicted in TOS.*

TNG, as much as I like the show, kept trying to insist that globohomo was a good idea, which is why DS9 aged so well as it pushed back against that nonsense on its own terms. Babylon 5 is a good show, but precisely because it didn't take place in Star Trek is why it couldn't push back on the idea of the Federation as an inherent good.

*Which made it susceptible to woke, but no one could have foreseen that kind of spergery.

 

[Dom Cruise]

So this is where I learn that the only episodes of TNG I've seen start to finish, beyond a few glimpses as a kid, are all from season 2 when G4 started airing the series in 2006.

But I thought I was seeing episodes from season 1, did G4 skip season 1 or did they really play episodes that quickly? Because I seem to remember watching it right after they started airing it.

Anyway my impression is that the show started off very cheesy, but not necessarily bad, I don't know why one wouldn't recommend just starting from the beginning.

 

[Mola Ram]

So this is where I learn that the only episodes of TNG I've seen start to finish, beyond a few glimpses as a kid, are all from season 2 when G4 started airing the series in 2006.

But I thought I was seeing episodes from season 1, did G4 skip season 1 or did they really play episodes that quickly? Because I seem to remember watching it right after they started airing it.

Anyway my impression is that the show started off very cheesy, but not necessarily bad, I don't know why one wouldn't recommend just starting from the beginning.

The first bunch of episodes are genuinely awful. "Farpoint" isn't really an awful idea, but it's so very sl-o-o-o-o-o-o-w. The endless saucer separation sequence comes to mind, but really the problem is it was a 2-hour event movie (later broken into a two part episode) when the story just couldn't sustain that long a runtime.

Then you have "The Naked Now," which apart from being a direct ripoff of a TOS episode has all these characters who we've just met behaving wildly out of character. It's the sort of episode you run in a second or third season. Also, I think this was the first time Wesley saved the ship. That happening so early is probably the main reason so many people think he was doing it all the time.

Up next is "Code of Honor," widely considered to be horrifyingly racist. Whether it's racist or not is up for debate, I think, but there's no question the all-African colony is incredibly cartoonish and the episode is quite terrible. Kinda wished they'd talked about this one, as it's somewhat infamous.

Fourth episode (but the fifth hour) is "The Last Outpost," which gave us some of Jean-Luc's backstory in the form of the USS Stargazer ... but also introduced the Ferengi. The laughable, terrible Ferengi, with their ridiculous body language and styrofoam whips.

So it's not that the first season is terrible from start to finish, but there are a lot of bad episodes, and the first five hours (or whatever, minus commercials) are absolutely punishing to sit through. Whatever details you miss from these episodes you'll probably pick up easily enough. It's how shows were designed back then.

 

[Dom Cruise]

The first bunch of episodes are genuinely awful. "Farpoint" isn't really an awful idea, but it's so very sl-o-o-o-o-o-o-w. The endless saucer separation sequence comes to mind, but really the problem is it was a 2-hour event movie (later broken into a two part episode) when the story just couldn't sustain that long a runtime.

Then you have "The Naked Now," which apart from being a direct ripoff of a TOS episode has all these characters who we've just met behaving wildly out of character. It's the sort of episode you run in a second or third season. Also, I think this was the first time Wesley saved the ship. That happening so early is probably the main reason so many people think he was doing it all the time.

Up next is "Code of Honor," widely considered to be horrifyingly racist. Whether it's racist or not is up for debate, I think, but there's no question the all-African colony is incredibly cartoonish and the episode is quite terrible. Kinda wished they'd talked about this one, as it's somewhat infamous.

Fourth episode (but the fifth hour) is "The Last Outpost," which gave us some of Jean-Luc's backstory in the form of the USS Stargazer ... but also introduced the Ferengi. The laughable, terrible Ferengi, with their ridiculous body language and styrofoam whips.

So it's not that the first season is terrible from start to finish, but there are a lot of bad episodes, and the first five hours (or whatever, minus commercials) are absolutely punishing to sit through. Whatever details you miss from these episodes you'll probably pick up easily enough. It's how shows were designed back then.

Like I said, the only episodes I've seen are from season 2, where the show struck me as very interesting if not necessarily great in those early days.

fyi the episodes I remember seeing are the casino and Sherlock Holmes episodes.

What's funny about "Code of Honor" to me from the clips I've seen is it reminds me of Black Panther and Wakanda, is it racist or is it Woke? What is really the difference these days?

To me TNG really defined the culture of the 1990s, so it's no surprise it didn't really know what to do with itself in the 1980s, oftentimes you get early glimpses of the next decade's culture around the 7th year of a decade, but it's always in it's nascent stages.

 

[Mola Ram]

What's funny about "Code of Honor" to me from the clips I've seen is it reminds me of Black Panther and Wakanda, is it racist or is it Woke? What is really the difference these days?

"Code of Honor" is aggressively un-woke, which is one of the few things to like about it. It's so un-woke that no less than Jonathan Frakes has referred to it as "a racist piece of shit" and tried to get it yanked from syndication, as he feels it damages the series.

Then again, that dude was in Picard, so fuck him.

 

[Dom Cruise]

"Code of Honor" is aggressively un-woke, which is one of the few things to like about it. It's so un-woke that no less than Jonathan Frakes has referred to it as "a racist piece of shit" and tried to get it yanked from syndication, as he feels it damages the series.

Then again, that dude was in Picard, so fuck him.

Weird that an episode like that could get made in the year 1987.

Rich Evans talked about season 1 being written by guys who grew up in the 1930s and he said it like that was a bad thing, this brings up something I've been thinking about here lately and that's the idea that the 1930s has more in common culturally with the 2000s than the 2000s has with the year 2021.

I was struck by that idea when replaying Halo 3 last year, it just hit me "this feels more like a Flash Gordan serial from the 1930s than a video game made in 2020" and it was weird, but made a certain sense.

I've always had a weird fascination with the 1930s since I was a kid and the idea of the 1930s having such a long life culturally is not a bad thing if you ask me.

 

[frozenrunner]

Part of what made Star Trek fun was trying to figure out how to get to Star Trek times. The most obvious evidence is trying to make technology close to what was shown on the show such as the communicator, touch screen interfaces, teleconferencing, and .mp3 and 4 files. The second is trying to get to the color blindness (but not full alien blindness) depicted in TOS.*

Though I never thought about it too hard, I always assumed replicator and transporter technology was behind the radical transformation on Earth. Though the show never adequately connects the dots (because taking that tech to its logical conclusion would kill all possibility of drama), being able to break down matter at the atomic level and restructure it into other forms of matter would result in a literal post-scarcity world almost over night. IRL I think that would result in unbelievable social ill and decay (a la The Last Night's premise) instead of utopia, but I'll give them a pass for not outright claiming communism worked to get us to the aspirational premise. (A premise which is truly beautiful, if delusional.)