Year of Trek

Khaaaaaan!

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

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With the original series they say the odd movies are not very good and the even ones are. I usually agreed with this, but watching Search for Spock again, I felt it is better then what most people say. The only thing I really didn't like about it is that Spock is revived, instead of a revival ending in the Wrath of Khan it is a whole revival movie. But that aside I did enjoy the movie.

They changed the actress that plays Lt. Saavick from Kirstie Alley to Robin Curtis. She was a little more Vulcan in this movie.

The death of David was a way I was able to tolerate a revival movie. David wasn't as close to Kirk as Spock was but he was Kirk's son, someone he knew about but avoided at his mother's request. Now that David finally knows him, and in the Wrath of Khan even said he was proud of him is dead, at the hands of the Klingon, it sets up the plot of Star Trek IV: The Undiscovered Country. I was a little surprised when Kruge was hanging off the side of a cliff over a pool of lava, Kirk offered to save him.

It isn't revealed how much time passed between The Motion Picture and The Wrath of Khan but I assume it is only a couple years. They just did a refit of the Enterprise and now that it is damage by Khan they are going to decommission it. They show off a new ship type, the Excelsior which eventually Sulu will take command of. It has always been my favorite class of ship, and in TNG there are numerous Excelsior class ships.

3 is definitely the best of the odd movies, including all the TNG ones.

Christopher Lloyd's Klingon is fantastic. And boom goes the Enterprise. Heavy stuff.

I... have had... enough of... YOU!

kazar wrote:

Glad you are enjoying it Sorbicol. I liked Voyager and don't fully understand the general dislike for it.

I think Voyagers two main problems were the incipid nature of many of its crew in the early seasons, which - to be fair - were also among the worst early seasons of any Trek series, even Enterprise. It picks up considerably once Kes leaves and Seven of Nine arrives. Not for the reasons most prepubescent teenage boys will tell you either! However that’s probably more for discussion when you get that far later in the year.

I’m currently watching Star Trek Discovery (I have access via Netflix here in the UK) and it’ll be really interesting to get your perspective on it if you decide to watch that too. Sorry I wasn’t clear from your early posts If that was your intention or not.

Sorbicol wrote:
kazar wrote:

Glad you are enjoying it Sorbicol. I liked Voyager and don't fully understand the general dislike for it.

I think Voyagers two main problems were the incipid nature of many of its crew in the early seasons, which - to be fair - were also among the worst early seasons of any Trek series, even Enterprise.

Nostalgia goggles are a factor. I would watch a random episode of the first two seasons of TNG before I'd watch a random episode of the first two seasons of Voyager, but if you stack them side by side, it would be hard for me to argue that the former is actually "better" in any kind of objective sense.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

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This is probably my favorite Star Trek movie watching it dozens of time as a child. I grew up in Ontario Canada and all I knew of California I learned from watching TV. When I turned 26, I moved to Los Angeles and 7 years later to the San Francisco bay area. Living in San Jose, I get to visit places that distinctly remind me of this movie. The Sausalito aquarium where the whales George and Gracie were kept is actually the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

The humor and chemistry that they actors had in this movie finally felt like the original series again. From Kirk telling everyone to disperse on the streets of San Francisco to Spock saying cursing. The movie is probably the most quotable. "Everybody remember where we parked".

Week Ten

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I am getting to the week summary a bit late. I was able to get a decent amount of Star Trek watching for week ten but week eleven was a busy one so I didn't get time to do my write ups on time. Week ten I finished watching The Animated Series, watched the first four Star Trek movies and watched The Next Generation pilot Encounter at Farpoint. Other then the first Star Trek movie, all the content from this week was really good.

The animated series had zero deaths, so no red shirts were added to the tally. The first TNG had no crew deaths either (though two people got frozen). The movies did have some fatalities though they didn't wear the typical Red Blue and Gold color uniforms. My best guess of how it played out is 1 Red, 1 Blue and 2 Gold. I did include Spock's death in Wrath of Khan as gold, but his revival is a -1 so it cancels out. Note that Spock is a Captain in the movies so he no longer is attributed to his blue uniform.

TAS S2E5: How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth
TAS S2E6: The Counter-Clock Incident
TOS Movie 1: The Motion Picture
TOS Movie 2: The Wrath of Khan
TOS Movie 3: The Search for Spock
TOS Movie 4: The Voyage Home
TNG S1E1 & S1E2: Encounter at Farpoint

1987 for the first TNG episode. Man that makes me feel old!

My experience of watching TNG was two fold. It didn’t start to be shown here in the UK until 1990 if I remember correctly. It was on BBC2 at 6pm, and my family (me, parents & older brother) would all sit down for tea and watch it together. I can’t say my Mum was that bothered but my Dad and I loved it. After the first season my brother moved off to university, I was doing my A levels by then, was getting older and more sociable and so I didn’t see every episode (unless I remembered to set our video recorder - those were the days!) and it sort of faded from my ‘list of things to do’.

When I went to university in 1993 I’d pretty forgotten all about it. It wasn’t until a random party I meet 2 girls who mentioned they were renting TNG videos from the local blockbuster equivalent on a Friday night and going through from the start. They invited me to come along and watch with them. So I did, and it was a weekly thing for us all pretty much the entire 3 years we were all there.

We got through all in TNG by the time we graduated, and had also started on DS9 (which we weren’t that impressed with for the first season) We’ve all been life long friends ever since. In fact, I’m going to a football match this afternoon with the husband and son of one of them.

Just felt the need to share after reading what you’ve posted about Encounter at Farpoint.

That's awesome.

Was TNG syndicated in the US for new episodes? In Louisville it came on Sat night at 7pm on NBC. DS9 ended up on FOX on Sunday evenings and I never got into it live but went back later and marathoned it in DVD from the library in around 2006 or 07.

Yeah, it was first-run syndication, I believe.

steinkrug wrote:

Yeah, it was first-run syndication, I believe.

I think TNG was the first straight to syndication TV show ever.

Are you sure Tboon? I mean The Muppet Show exists.

Norfair wrote:

Are you sure Tboon? I mean The Muppet Show exists.

I forgot where I heard that. And it turns out not to be even close to true.

Now I know a lot more about the history of syndicated TV.

Wow, what a cool project -- tagging in for updates.

Week Eleven

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As mentioned in my last weekly summary, I have been very busy lately which is making me post these summaries late. Last week ended with the first episode of TNG which leads into this week getting through the first third of season one. When I started this venture it was a common theme of people saying the first few seasons of TNG are hard to watch, and I was expecting this to be so. But I have been surprised how many of the good episodes from my memory were in this season.

The episode with the Traveler (Where No One Has Gone Before) is one of my favorite early TNG episodes and The Battle where Picard is being mind controlled by the Ferengi. This week did yield two episodes I dislike. The Naked Now which is a copy of an original series plot and Code of Honor which is generally accepted as the worse TNG episode.

There was only one death that would qualify for the red shirt race, the death of a lead engineer who wears gold in the episode Lonely Among Us.

TNG S1E3: The Naked Now
TNG S1E4: Code of Honor
TNG S1E5: The Last Outpost
TNG S1E6: Where No One Has Gone Before
TNG S1E7: Lonely Among Us
TNG S1E8: Justice
TNG S1E9: The Battle

Week Twelve

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This week has been pretty busy as well so I only got to 7 episodes. But I am enjoying the first season of TNG more then I was expecting. There have been some episodes that I have had fond memories of and have been a joy to rewatch. Hide and Q is the second episode with Q in it, and any episode with Q is worth watching for the most part. The Big Goodbye had Picard playing the role of Dixon Hill Private Eye on the holodeck. Data meets his brother in Datalore and 11001001 lets us explore more of what is possible on the holodeck where we meet Minuet.

TNG S1E10 - Hide and Q
TNG S1E11 - Haven
TNG S1E12 - The Big Goodbye
TNG S1E13 - Datalore
TNG S1E14 - Angel One
TNG S1E15 - 11001001
TNG S1E16 - Too Short a Season

Amazing! I did this with my first born. It started as a way to pass time during night feedings and then grew into a similar undertaking as yours, minus the book and video game.

Baron Of Hell wrote:

I'm making my way through all of trek and currently on Voyager. The fun part is noticing actors playing different parts that I didn't notice before.

Even more fun is seeing A-list cameos in the movies.

Bonus: Seth McFarlane has a recurring role on Enterprise!

Keep an eye out for Ashley Judd!

I saw The Rock in a obvious place.

Grenn wrote:

Keep an eye out for Ashley Judd!

The Game. Great episode. Can't wait to get to it.

Week Thirteen

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The past few weeks has had very little TV watching time and I don't see it getting any better until the middle of the month. I was able to watch 10 episodes this week finishing Season One of The Next Generation.

The last half of the season was actually pretty good. Home Soil is the episode where Human's were called "Ugly giant bags of mostly water". Heart of Glory let us take a real look at the Klingons as we know them in TNG, DS9 and Voyager. Skin of Evil is the episode where Tasha Yar is killed. While I remember the episode being boring, this viewing it actually was more emotional then I viewed it with some really good quotes. My favorite episode of the season is Conspiracy which leaves a cliffhanger ending that will never be resolved.

Starting this week, I plan on streaming on Twitch a star trek game every Saturday starting at 10am PST. Everyone is welcome to watch and chat with me as I play. I will take on the 25th Anniversary adventure game again with the goal of finishing it and maybe it's sequel this month. I hope to have a few surprises during the stream. www.twitch.tv/kazargwj

TNG S1E17: When the Bough Breaks
TNG S1E18: Home Soil
TNG S1E19: Coming of Age
TNG S1E20: Heart of Glory
TNG S1E21: The Arsenal of Freedom
TNG S1E22: Symbiosis
TNG S1E23: Skin of Evil
TNG S1E24: We'll Always Have Paris
TNG S1E25: Conspiracy
TNG S1E26: The Neutral Zone

The Next Generation: Season One

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Finally got to The Next Generation, my favorite Star Trek series. Going into this year I received many comments about how TNGs first few seasons are harder to watch and it really only gets good by the middle of season three. I have never watched TNG in order. I watched from season 4 through 7 in order as it aired, but every other viewing was in syndication. I was pleasantly surprised when some of my favorite episodes were in season one. There were some episodes that just didn't age well (if they were even considered decent when they aired) but the adcting on average was pretty good and there were some good introductory stories.

This season introduced a lot of things that are common themes throughout all series that followed. They introduce what Klingon culture is like. The Motion Picture and Search for Spock re-introduce the Klingons with their new look but we don't really get into their history or what makes them tick until TNG. The Ferengi are a new alien we see that become a reoccurring species in TNG and a regular in DS9.

This season also introduces the holodeck and what they are capable of. In The Animated Series they show a holodeck but it is a simple with environment only as is the one we see in Star Trek: Enterprise. TNG introduces the idea that characters can be introduced that act and feel like real people. There was no time travel in this episode, which is a good thing. I think every season of TNG going forward does have at least one and Voyager is horrible for it.

Worf
Worf starts as a minor role, a backup bridge officer who can't control his anger. He doesn't really have a specific job which is even mentioned in one of the episodes. It isn't until Lt. Yar's death that defines his purpose on the show. In this season he wears a gold baldric that looks exactly like the one we see in The Original Series episode Errand of Mercy which gets replaced in season two.

Wesley Crusher
Wesley is the annoying character that isn't well acted that people didn't like about TNG, the Jar-Jar Binks of Star Trek. And this was his worst season. As he grew as an actor and got older I found his character to be more likable (until his last episode where he acted like a jerk the whole time). Thankfully he only had a minor to non-existing part in most of this season.

Deanna Troi
A counselor as a bridge officer is something new to Star Trek. I don't even know if it is normal in the Federation or something that Picard explicitly was looking for. Voyager for instance didn't have a counselor on the bridge that I know of, even before being flung into the Delta Quadrant. Her telepathic abilities let her help the crew deal with unknown or hostile beings. They were smart to keep her from being too powerful by making her half human so she can only feel emotions and not read actual thoughts like her mother.

Gordi La Forge
In season one he was assigned as a helmsman. The choice to not have a fixed chief engineer was odd, and I does feel weird watching Gordi not play his part. He does have episodes where he shows his technical aptitude though which makes his lead into chief engineer believable. His friendship with Data starts right in season one. There is even an episode where Data is learning to paint creatively and Gordi is helping him.

Tasha Yar
Tasha's run in Star Trek was a short one. While her actor will be back a few more times to play an alternate Tasha and her half Romulan daughter, her actual character was cut short in the episode Skin of Evil. I was never a real fan of her character and thought Worf was a great replacement, but the episode where she died was actually a really good episode with a very emotional ending.

Doctor Crusher
The romance between Doctor Crusher and Captain Picard started right at the second episode. It felt odd given that Picard was the one that gave the order that got her husband killed. The pretext that goes on in the whole season that really doesn't go anywhere until the movies is at times uncomfortable. There were a few episodes where her medical abilities were the main plot, but I found her better seasons are yet to come.

Lt. Commander Data
My favorite character. Data's child like attitude, while being really intelligent and his quest to be more human. It is a perfect combination. In season one I felt that Brent Spiner was still learning his part and there were times where you could see emotion spill out of his character. But after the first few episodes he starts nailing the part.

Riker
Beardless, brash, he is always a main character that tries to be like Kirk but generally forgettable. I felt that in most episodes even though he was leading the away team, Picard still felt like the lead character.

Picard
Even from the first episode it is obvious that Patrick Stewart is an accomplished actor. Everyone else is trying to get their footing and you could believe that he was on the bridge for three seasons before this. His character is very different from Kirk's. After just one season I can definitely say I prefer Picard.

Red Shirts
TNG did a flip, making gold shirts for security and engineering and converting command shirts to red. This means I should expect to see less red shirts die. Interestingly enough this is true. The count is Red 1, Blue 0 and Gold 4.

kazar wrote:

A counselor as a bridge officer is something new to Star Trek. I don't even know if it is normal in the Federation or something that Picard explicitly was looking for. Voyager for instance didn't have a counselor on the bridge that I know of, even before being flung into the Delta Quadrant.

Voyager was a smaller ship, and didn't have families aboard the way the D does. Maybe counselors are just for the big Galaxy-class ships that are more like small towns in space. There's probably a lot more demand for a dedicated counselor when you've got marriages, parents with their children, civilians, etc.

hbi2k wrote:
kazar wrote:

A counselor as a bridge officer is something new to Star Trek. I don't even know if it is normal in the Federation or something that Picard explicitly was looking for. Voyager for instance didn't have a counselor on the bridge that I know of, even before being flung into the Delta Quadrant.

Voyager was a smaller ship, and didn't have families aboard the way the D does. Maybe counselors are just for the big Galaxy-class ships that are more like small towns in space. There's probably a lot more demand for a dedicated counselor when you've got marriages, parents with their children, civilians, etc.

I don't think size matters. I would be willing to bet there were psychologists on ships like Voyager. Kirk's Enterprise did and Ezri Dax was on DS9. I was more curious as to her role as a bridge officer. Her empathic abilities made her an asset to the bridge crew but was that her only reason to be there. There probably is no known answer, but it is a question to ponder.

I always found the range of her ability strange. Was communication-tech so advanced that it picked up, and transmitted, the emotional-states of beings? Because I’m sure the minimum distance between ships, even during their face-to-face “meetings,” was at least a kilometre. When you live in a galaxy full of telepaths, and empaths, you’d think you’d design your transmitters to NOT carry that extra data... You can’t tell me that she’s picking up on their facial “tells” and body-language (even if she’s studied them), because she’s used it with non-humanoids, too.

I suppose it’s like the transporters, if you create a tech that would trivialize a lot of problems, you constantly have to come up with a reason you can’t use that particular “magic”.

“It does what the story needs it to do, when it needs it.”

Week Fourteen

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Another low count week which puts me one month behind in my viewing. I am one quarter into the year this week so I have a lot of time left that I can use to catch up, but if I don't start catching up soon I could have an insurmountable mountain of episodes to watch.

This week started going back to watch the Star Trek pilot The Cage. I was expecting it to have more content then what they showed in The Menagerie but other then two scenes at the end, it was used in it's entirety.

I also started my weekly video game stream on https://twitch.tv/kazargwj where I played the first four chapters of the game Star Trek: 15th anniversary. Here is the replay of the session. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/407094015

Other then The Cage and Loud as a Whisper, every episode I watched this week I really enjoyed and I would recommend it be watched.

TOS S1E0: The Cage
TNG S2E1: The Child
TNG S2E2: Where Silence Has Lease
TNG S2E3: Elementary, Dear Data
TNG S2E4: The Outrageous Okona
TNG S2E5: Loud as a Whisper

Ugh, The Child. That was an unfortunate episode, especially when the men in the room have a conversation about whether to abort the child without once asking the mother.

trichy wrote:

Ugh, The Child. That was an unfortunate episode, especially when the men in the room have a conversation about whether to abort the child without once asking the mother.

It is because of that scene that I feel the episode should be watched though. While it is awful that it even happens, it creates that awkward moment and Deanna's response was from my perspective pretty powerful.

Just noticing that Chief O'Brien is nowhere to be found in the thread mural. OUTRAGE!!