Never figured out how the idea of seatbelts was lost, but they obviously didn't know about them.

I probably would've watched it if it was like a Star Trek equivalent of Curb Your Enthusiasm with Picard breaking extra terrestrial taboos and creating hilarious diplomatic misunderstandings.

Animavore wrote:I probably would've watched it if it was like a Star Trek equivalent of Curb Your Enthusiasm with Picard breaking extra terrestrial taboos and creating hilarious diplomatic misunderstandings.

ie Galaxy Quest

That would be "the Orville"

laklak wrote:Never figured out how the idea of seatbelts was lost, but they obviously didn't know about them.

Or circuit breakers.

laklak wrote:Never figured out how the idea of seatbelts was lost, but they obviously didn't know about them.

Star Trek is an alternate timeline where Ralph Nader never existed.

...and the Corvair was the best selling car in the 70s

Maybe in our timeline the wrong people's lives were saved...

I think we took a wrong turn at a universe branching some time back.

Hermit wrote:

arugula2 wrote:...the only reason to recommend fiction on TV is if it's written/acted/directed well. I can't speak for the original series, but much of TNG is simply good television...

Keep enjoying the show. I have sampled it over the decades. Production values have certainly risen since those horrifically cheap productions...

<snip>
...but content has never (in my view) gone beyond soap opera standard.

*
Just to be emphatic... "written/acted/directed well" seems unanswered here (re TNG). I do see a specific impression about "production values" but... imo that doesn't figure much into whether or not I'll recommend a show, if it has the other elements. Otherwise, there's a subtle comparison here to "content" that hasn't gone "beyond soap opera standard". Idk... it does seem like an earnest encounter with TNG is yet to be had here.

I find a lot of vintage Star Trek (say, up to and including Voyager, before set design and general visuals shifted noticeably) to be utter dreck. (It's generally worse after that.) It's specific episodes of TNG that transcend the tackiness of the franchise as a whole, imo, and make for excellent television, by drawing on the strength of the ensemble & some clever writing and storyboarding. Luckily, the show is truly episodic, and one can enjoy only the good episodes while gleaning enough about personalities & relationships just from those.

edit: wrong attribution

Ah c'mon, Evil Spock was positively Shakespearean. Hand me your agonizer, please.

I have a lot of nostalgia for the original series. Some of the stuff was pretty good compared to contemporary shows. But there was a lot of crap, too.

I caught some of TNG & DS9 (and Voyager) while they aired, but... have surprisingly little nostalgia for them. It's only many years later that I've come to appreciate just how good certain TNG episodes are, in the ways that matter most to me (ie, cheap sets aside). The good ones I can probably watch at least once a year & still enjoy. Still, it's a fairly small fraction of the total. Fuck it, I'll probably list them here at some point, because they deserve to be rescued from the cheesy funk of the franchise.

What were the choices back then? I don't remember the sequence but I recall Dr. Who, Voyage to the bottom of the sea, Star Trek and Twilight Zone. I watched what was available. I have no nostalgia for them and recent technical advances are superb but wtf has Star Trek: Picard got to do with anything? Beaming down for a fist fight was/is a plainly stupid idea and as a plot development tool it's just wasteful of everyone's time.

In the good old times, the Federation was a society to look up to. It showed that utopia was possible. Today, in the new series, it's just as corrupt and evil as all our current governments. Really a bummer

^ Yes, I forgot to add the bit about lack of relevance to earlier Star Trek series in my burbling rant. sry.

I liked watching discovery and Picard. They are certainly entertaining. And the idea that there will not be utopia, but that progress, freedom, democracy is an ever ongoing process that needs constant struggle is certainly more realistic. But it just means losing on the hope, watching the old Federation would give.

That's entertainment? [/Weller] Seriously, Star Trek: Picard is as entertaining (read: incoherent) as a dotard cult leader in the White House speech:


[/rant]