I’m brain dead and will likely be for a while. My head is swimming with muscle names and their origin and insertion points. With rep and set counts for a variety of client goals. I’m preparing for the NASM personal trainer cert plus a second more physical cert while teaching classes, etc. So expect some off-topic posts while I unwind.
I’ve been an anti-trekkie for a while now. I read all the books and loved the TV show as a kid. I watched the Next Gen in high school and university like everyone else. But let’s be honest — trek has been mediocre for a very, very long time.
The next gen and the other recent shows had almost done it in. I didn’t like any of them with the sole exception of Deep Space Nine, which I consider the height of the entire franchise or whatever you want to call it. I got so sick of “look, something is taking over the ship” week after week. Yawn. “Oh no. Something is wrong with Data.” Snooze.
Deep Space Nine was almost Shakespearean with the plots and long-term story line. It was the only one that took chances with the material and tried to do something new.
Many may not remember this, but the covers of the books that covered the original TV series had a bigger theme than recent material. Check this out:
And this:
Now look at this:
All the other next gen and recent books have been like this. The originals had a bigger feel to them. Something was happening on a much bigger scale. In the next gen, trek became about this little group of people. We started getting scenes of people yakking around tables. Very Clinton era, if you don’t mind me saying so.
Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As ‘Fun, Watchable’
This video from the Onion sums it up perfectly. Trek had become an in-bred snoozefest about a small group of people that was enjoyed by a small group of people.
Thank goodness the new movie killed all of that off. I loved it.
No more hippie planets that heal you and allow you to bore people for the rest of your artificially extended life. No more of Data trying to become the whitest white man in the universe.
This trek movie throws all that away and starts anew. Like Admiral Pike says in the new movie, Starfleet had lost a certain quality and the new movie/crew bring that back.
Well done, guys.
0 responses so far ↓
Ralteria // May 14, 2009 at 6:29 pm |
Wow…
This is the first time I think you’ve posted something that I disagree with. The cast and characters, their relationships and how they deal with situational events are the only thing that really make a story.
Sure repititous plot and episodic drivel can kill anything, but what made Next Gen so good was that the cast ended up developing an extremely good rapport between each other. Take any frame work or setting out of the equation and you still have people interacting with people.
BTW, Congrats on the your 3rd year!
Dave Chesser // May 14, 2009 at 6:47 pm |
Thanks! And I’m glad it was something trivial like a movie that you disagreed with me on.
elf_man // May 14, 2009 at 10:23 pm |
Overall, NextGen had a lot of good material, even with some of its problems. They didn’t take the risks that they should. More controversial is that you admit to liking DS9! It had its flaws as well, especially when it bogged down a bit after the Dominion war thing, but overall I loved it, especially since it went places that other series didn’t. I don’t know that it always succeeded at those attempts, but it made a lot of headway. Most trekkies try to crucify you if you admit it was good, though. Something about there not being any exploration, so it isn’t really trek, blahblahblah.
I think you can see a lot of that insular material when you compare the movies Generations and First Contact with Insurrection and Nemesis. Insurrection was just too slow and crew-centric, Nemesis had too much fan service. Ugh.
Chad Eisner // May 15, 2009 at 12:25 am |
Loved Next Gen. after 2nd season (Cardasian interrogator was David Warner’s best star Trek role)
DS-9 was ok after the 2nd.
Voyager bored me.
Enterprise……oh the horror. Why couldn’t Dean Stockwell have left that looser in the past.
Even number movies are pretty good until after First Contact. other than First Contact, all the next Gen movies sucked Romulan piriformis.
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It is an awsome site for reference. i use it all the time. It’s a great study guide for anatomy and movement stuff. Good luck on your exam. when do you test?
Tommy // May 15, 2009 at 7:06 am |
i dont like the new film… just saw it and i’m dissapointed – hows this for an original star trek plot: time travel. Also i’m really dissapointed with some of the casting, the only asian actor that they could find who looked anything like Mr Sulu is… John Cho – Harold from Harold and Kumar get the munchies! are there no other asian actors or is it felt that he only had to be asian and not a serious actor???