Star Trek - Space: The Final Frontier

[Tookie]

I'll give them a bit of a pass on ripping off Andromeda since my understanding is that it was scribbled down as a possible Star Trek spinoff. I mean, it will still suck because of the people executing it, but I won't fault them for falling back to the idea.

 

[Jones McCann]

You can go to the Animated Series next. And if you want more TOS, you can always dig into Star Trek Continues (https://www.startrekcontinues.com). That's my plan after finishing off the Original Series. I figure might as well go all in. I'm intrigued by Star Trek Continues because it looks like they put some time and effort into it (fingers crossed).

I never knew about the animated series, I'll definitely give that a watch. As for the Star Trek Continues I'm not sure I can bare to watch any continuation without the original cast, they pretty much carried the whole show. I'll definitely check out the first episode and see what I think though.

 

[Jesus Goldstein]

I’ll second Star Trek Continues. I was initially afraid it would be cringy fanfic but I think they really nailed the look and feel of TOS. The acting may be a little shaky, but the writing seems to really get the essence of the original series. Some fun cameos and call-backs, too.

 

[Flexo]

Unfortunately instead of Kevin Sorbo chewing the scenery and Lexa Doig in a catsuit we're getting... well, you know.

I genuinely liked the first two seasons of Andromeda a lot. It's unfortunate that subsequent seasons were wrecked by an ego clash between Robert Hewitt Wolfe (developer/producer/writer) and Sorbo (who was a fairly big name in television at the time thanks to his run on Hercules, and nominally an executive producer in addition to being the show lead). Wolfe, who had come to Andromeda from a writing job on Deep Space 9, wanted to keep moving the series towards a longer story arc format with episodes that would highlight and develop each of the main cast members (more or less like Deep Space 9 had done successfully). Sorbo wanted to be the star of every episode, and to push a more episodic one-off TOS-like format with "more aliens, more space battles, and less internal conflict". The studio sided with Sorbo and Wolfe left the show, after which Sorbo was given increased editorial control and the overall writing and production quality massively declined.

I've read his coda and his longterm plans.

I have no idea if it would have worked at all (doesn't even seem possible on a TV budget - he really should take it to anime) but DAMN if I don't hate that we never got to see him try. It would have been glorious. Maybe a glorious failure, maybe a glorious success - but glorious nonetheless.

I'll give them a bit of a pass on ripping off Andromeda since my understanding is that it was scribbled down as a possible Star Trek spinoff. I mean, it will still suck because of the people executing it, but I won't fault them for falling back to the idea.

I want to rate you both agree and disagree at the same time.

 

[Sexual Chocolate]

V is pretty bad due to lazy scriptwriting:

* "The Great Barrier" was a silly plot device, and the idea that the Enterprise could travel 25,000 light years as if it was a quick run to Alpha Centauri foreshadowed JJ-tier movie science

* The concept of Sybok healing people's "inner pain" and this somehow making them abandon their sworn duty and become fanatical cultists was dumb (but maybe plausible to upper-middle-class Californians, idk)

* The Reddit-tier understanding of religion was vintage Roddenberry, who (like a lot of mid-20th century liberals) seemed to disapprove of God on the grounds of "don't tell me what to do, Daaaaad!" Unlike Philip K Dick or Gene Wolfe, Star Trek has never had anything interesting to say about religion (Ben Sisko: space prophet was also stupid) because it's a bland materialist utopia written by nerds, but at least "why does God need a starship?" was a great line.

 

[White Devil]

God needs a starship because the Enterprise is fuckin' rad.

 

[Marissa Moira]

I'll give them a bit of a pass on ripping off Andromeda since my understanding is that it was scribbled down as a possible Star Trek spinoff. I mean, it will still suck because of the people executing it, but I won't fault them for falling back to the idea.

They need to reference SeaQuest DSV next.

 

[Tookie]

They need to reference SeaQuest DSV next.

I just skimmed the Wikipedia article on that show because I barely remember it and I think I need to re-watch it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SeaQuest_DSV

In the season premiere, the seaQuest reappears on Earth, its crew mostly intact, ten years after their abduction at the end of season two. Captain Bridger retires to raise his new grandson and Michael Ironside joins the cast as the more militaristic Captain Oliver Hudson. Originally, Ironside refused to take over from Scheider as star of the series. "I saw so many problems that I couldn't see where I'd be able to do the work I wanted to do." claimed Ironside.[17] Also considered for the lead of the series was actor Jonathan Banks, who had previously appeared in the first season episode "Whale Songs" as radical environmentalist Maximilian Scully.[18] After weeks of negotiations where Ironside offered producers a number of changes to the storytelling structure of the series, which were agreed upon, he finally signed on. "You won't see me fighting any man-eating glowworms, rubber plants, 40-foot crocodiles and I don't talk to Darwin." he said. Though not cast as the new lead of the series, Jonathan Banks would reprise his character of Scully in the third season.

 

[L50LasPak]

Star Trek Continues

I was pleasantly surprised by that show, though it does have its flaws. The set design is pretty much perfect, the actors do pretty well (Yes that is Vic Mignoga as Captain Kirk, and yes that's also Grant Imahara as Sulu in some episodes RIP). Its basically a bunch of relatively well-off people LARPing as the TOS crew which could have gone infinitely worse than it did.

If you ask me Starship Farragut is probably my pick for best TOS fan production. Though Exeter was pretty good even if they produced it so long ago that they didn't have a lot of the benefits Farragut did.

I never knew about the animated series, I'll definitely give that a watch. As for the Star Trek Continues I'm not sure I can bare to watch any continuation without the original cast, they pretty much carried the whole show. I'll definitely check out the first episode and see what I think though.

The Animated Series definitely deserves a fair shake but you are really in for a shitfest. There's only a handful of good episodes and its really primitive. It does have the original cast in full though, aside from Walter Keonig who I think turned it down. Leonard Nimoy refused to join up if they didn't get everyone back so everyone else is there. There's a lot of mistakes like a shot they re-use a lot where its plain to see that Scotty is missing his pants and along with them his entire lower body. The animation is stiff, and some of the voice acting is weird. Actually a lot of the voice acting is weird, since like 60% of the time when they needed a guest voice, James Doohan would just do the voice for them. He's actually pretty good at it, but it starts to get really obvious if you watch a lot of episodes back to back.

Off the top of my head, Beyond the Farthest Star, Yesteryear, More Tribbles More Troubles, The Pirates of Orion and maybe How Sharper than a Serpent's Tooth are probably the better episodes. Yesteryear is the big one that everyone likes no matter how much they think TAS sucks.

 

[Miller]

V is pretty bad due to lazy scriptwriting:

* "The Great Barrier" was a silly plot device, and the idea that the Enterprise could travel 25,000 light years as if it was a quick run to Alpha Centauri foreshadowed JJ-tier movie science

* The concept of Sybok healing people's "inner pain" and this somehow making them abandon their sworn duty and become fanatical cultists was dumb (but maybe plausible to upper-middle-class Californians, idk)

* The Reddit-tier understanding of religion was vintage Roddenberry, who (like a lot of mid-20th century liberals) seemed to disapprove of God on the grounds of "don't tell me what to do, Daaaaad!" Unlike Philip K Dick or Gene Wolfe, Star Trek has never had anything interesting to say about religion (Ben Sisko: space prophet was also stupid) because it's a bland materialist utopia written by nerds, but at least "why does God need a starship?" was a great line.

To me there's nothing wrong with that, I always thought that this superior being got put in that space jail because his ability to feed on people's inner pain represented a threat to all living beings in the galaxy. The whole thing sounds like a typical episode of TOS.

 

[Sexual Chocolate]

To me there's nothing wrong with that, I always thought that this superior being got put in that space jail because his ability to feed on people's inner pain represented a threat to all living beings in the galaxy. The whole thing sounds like a typical episode of TOS.

It would've been fine - maybe even good - as the premise of a TOS episode (I liked The Squire of Gothos and Who Mourns For Adonais).

As the premise of a Star Trek movie it's lacking* (and The Wizard of Oz showed us the same trick, executed more deftly, 50 years before), but it still could've been a good movie if the script wasn't so lame.

At least we got to see 56 year old Nichelle Nichols' sexy space-GILF dance, I guess

*to be fair, it wasn't as bad as the plots for every TNG movie except First Contact

 

[Tasty Tatty]

TAS has a furry.

To be fair, it wasn't as bad as the plots for every TNG movie except First Contact

They weren't that bad. Generations wasn't that bad as a transition from TV to movie.

Insurrection was fine and was fun. Now I think about it, both have similar plots.

 

[Starscreams Cape]

Watching "The Conscience of the King" tonight.

*Spock and Kirk really are at each other's throats in this one. Kirk tells Spock to mind his own business, later Spock says that if Kirk's quest to find Kodos affects the running of the Enterprise it IS his business

*This episode really shows the strong classical writing in TOS. Shakespeare is used to good effect

*The spray bottle to poison Reilly... Oof

*The guy who played Kodos was very good. "What were you twenty years ago?"... "Younger, captain, much younger"

*The daughter was really chewing the scenery at the end over her dad's body. McCoy makes it seem like she's going to get off with hospitalization. "She'll be well taken care of, Jim". She killed seven people!

Overall a good solid episode.

 

[Exceptionally Exceptional]

Watching "The Conscience of the King" tonight.

*Spock and Kirk really are at each other's throats in this one. Kirk tells Spock to mind his own business, later Spock says that if Kirk's quest to find Kodos affects the running of the Enterprise it IS his business

*This episode really shows the strong classical writing in TOS. Shakespeare is used to good effect

*The spray bottle to poison Reilly... Oof

*The guy who played Kodos was very good. "What were you twenty years ago?"... "Younger, captain, much younger"

*The daughter was really chewing the scenery at the end over her dad's body. McCoy makes it seem like she's going to get off with hospitalization. "She'll be well taken care of, Jim". She killed seven people!

Overall a good solid episode.

That was probably the episode of ToS that hit me in the feels the most. The poor old bastard obviously felt like shit for what happened, but in his own mind there was nothing else he could do. If he didn't act everyone would die, so he took what he felt was the only reasonable solution to letting everyone perish. And then the poor old bastard throws himself in front of Kirk to save him from his own daughter.
Seriously, how do you make me feel that bad for a villain?

 

[White Devil]

I just started Enterprise. I've never seen it at all and when it originally aired, I was losing my interest in watching television, cept for wrestling with my dad. I gotta say, I don't hate it so far. T'Pols tittie's in the first episode was nice and it's pretty obvious they cast her for pure eye candy. No matter, not like playing a Vulcan is hard; you just deadpan the whole role. One thing that does annoy me is they keep referring to the shop as Enterprise instead of The Enterprise.

 

[Van Darkholme]

I just started Enterprise. I've never seen it at all and when it originally aired, I was losing my interest in watching television, cept for wrestling with my dad. I gotta say, I don't hate it so far. T'Pols tittie's in the first episode was nice and it's pretty obvious they cast her for pure eye candy. No matter, not like playing a Vulcan is hard; you just deadpan the whole role. One thing that does annoy me is they keep referring to the shop as Enterprise instead of The Enterprise.

It gets better further down the seasons (not like there are a lot of them...). Most people seem to dislike the third one and its overall story arc (think Dominion Wars, but condensed into one season), but I honestly didn't mind it too much.

 

[UnKillFill]

I just started Enterprise. I've never seen it at all and when it originally aired, I was losing my interest in watching television, cept for wrestling with my dad. I gotta say, I don't hate it so far. T'Pols tittie's in the first episode was nice and it's pretty obvious they cast her for pure eye candy. No matter, not like playing a Vulcan is hard; you just deadpan the whole role. One thing that does annoy me is they keep referring to the shop as Enterprise instead of The Enterprise.

I still feel kind of bad for accidentally ruining some of DS9 for you, but if you're watching Enterprise right now, here's something of a peace offering for you:

(Not a spoiler, Enterprise never actually used this as a theme song, it's the theme song for some 80's sitcom, but it totally matches up perfectly with the Enterprise opening.) The actual Enterprise theme was terrible, and it only got worse.

 

[White Devil]

Oh god, I hate that song they use for the opening. Thank you.

 

[Flexo]

It does have the original cast in full though, aside from Walter Keonig who I think turned it down. Leonard Nimoy refused to join up if they didn't get everyone back so everyone else is there.

Actually it was Nimoy who insisted they rehire everyone - which ended up eating up most of the budget. They couldn't afford to keep the entire cast, so Walter ended up being dropped to save money. He didn't turn it down, legend goes he thought he was going to be on the show until at a convention, while he was on stage next to Gene Roddenberry a fan asked him how he felt about getting dropped from the cast and it was the first Walter had heard about it.

He was working on writing a script though and that ended up being the Infinite Vulcan - so technically speaking that episode does have all the original cast involved in some way.

Also note that Gene was infamous for meddling with every script that came in - so apparently the episode we got is NOT anything like Walter's original idea.

Oh god, I hate that song they use for the opening. Thank you.

Awwww... I posted it long ago in this thread. Nobody thanks the robot.

 

[Starscreams Cape]

That was probably the episode of ToS that hit me in the feels the most. The poor old bastard obviously felt like shit for what happened, but in his own mind there was nothing else he could do. If he didn't act everyone would die, so he took what he felt was the only reasonable solution to letting everyone perish. And then the poor old bastard throws himself in front of Kirk to save him from his own daughter.
Seriously, how do you make me feel that bad for a villain?

Exactly. In an episode seeped in Shakespeare, you have the daughter, who has killed to protect her father, wind up killing her father in the pursuit of that end. The father attains a tiny bit of absolution on his death.

And yea, even as a kid I remember thinking that maybe Kodos did what he had to do.

The writers of Nu-trek could never write something like this in a million years. I sincerely doubt they'd genuinely understand it and its Shakesperean lineage. They would look at you with empty stares and ask "what color is the father and the daughter?"