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Re: VOY S3: Sacred Ground

Jeff after your last day you will find out what is true or you wont.
And if you dont like Star Trek dont watch it.

"Live long and prosper"

Re: VOY S3: Sacred Ground

The other thing is how do you know what science is true? People have been putting out false science since there have been people. They do this for power and control of others. Its gotten to the point where science has turned into a warped form of religeon. I you want to know what is real science follow the money. The money will follow the power and greed and bend science to that end.

Re: VOY S3: Sacred Ground

science and religeon are not polar opposites. Just because you dont know all of science doesnt mean science wont eventually prove a creator.
Open your mind and dont be "incredibly condescending" to a differing point of view.
But thats ok. Believe what you want. Thats the Beauty of science fiction.
Trying to explain science before the science catches up.

And i did read a large amount of the comments but the opinions were repetitive.

To be honest ALL Star Trek episodes are nonsensical since they dont take into account relativity

Re: VOY S3: Sacred Ground

sorry i couldnt read all of the long winded comments but it looks like this episode went over most of your heads. Its all about faith.
There is no difference between religeon and science. If god created the cosmos and everything in it then he created the science to support it also.
Whether you believe in the religeon or science side of things or both is up to the individual.
Looks like capt Janeway took the leap of faith and it changed her view on things. As stated in the episode none of it matters you have free will to...

very good episode for those who get it

Re: SNW S2: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

It was a poorly written retread of "The City on the Edge of Forever". Most of the plot was nonsensical, two strangers plopped back in time somehow tracking down how to save the galaxy from cold fusion, or something like that. At least in the “The City…” they cooked up an explanation that the Guardian had a reason for placing people at a certain place and a certain time. But in this episode, they pushed a magic button, ended up in Toronto in the past, visited a blown-up bridge to find mystery alien stuff, travelled to and from Vermont (and somehow figured all that out), Yada Yada Yada. Fortunately Wesley could play street chess and earn lots and lots of money, fast.

If you turn off your brain and go with the flow, it might be OK. But it was also supposed to be a rom-com, and the two actors didn’t have the material or script to develop any sort of connection in 20 minutes or so. The hotel scene was cringey.

Much of SNW has been great to date, and for those who have grown up on TOS, a real blast from the past. But this episode had the feeling, like a lot of the other new Star Trek shows, that it was written by middle-school age authors.

The episode had a great payoff moment that was totally blown: dealing with the question of what should you do if you met the equivalent of Hitler as a child. If they didn’t have the chops to write it, they shouldn’t have tried.

Production values were great per the modern day streaming budgets. Wesley actually did a good job in this episode. The trick is to not expect him to be some version of William Shatner.

Re: PIC S3: Dominion

I just have no words for how much I hate this show. At this point, I don't even care if this is the only way I ever get to see TNG characters again. There's nothing they can do that will redeem this. Three seasons of mostly garbage.

Up until now, this season was mostly watchable but as soon as this episode started and I saw yet another Voyager character, I knew I was gonna hate it.

Muddled, dark, nihilistic, stupid. They're just trying to shoehorn their stupid ideas into the legit Star Trek world by bringing in characters we actually care(d) about.

Re: PIC S3: Imposters

Nope.

I'm surprised so many people are buying into this. Don't get me wrong. Third season is better than the two seasons of complete trash that came before it. But if those two seasons were trash, this one only has to be not complete trash to be better. So if I gave the first two seasons 1 star out of 5, I'd give this maybe 2.5 stars. That's if I'm rating it against the best Trek episodes of all time. And that's what we should be doing because this show is not only calling itself Star Trek. It's (supposedly) continuing the story of the characters who appeared in some of the best episodes of Star Trek ever.

But they're also putting a bunch of DS9 stuff in here. And while DS9 was the only Trek I liked at all outside of TOS and TNG, I still wasn't the biggest fan of it. And besides, there was more than enough material to work with from TNG that they shouldn't need anything else.

I'll finish watching this season and I hope it's the last season. And I hope they put Trek to rest soon because it's very obvious by now they just don't get it. They've made so many cheap ripoffs that sucked at this point.

Re: PIC S3: Disengage

IME, people change but they don't change that much. Which is beside the point. Star Trek has never been about being true to life. It has always been about giving people something to hope for and spire to. I sure hope to hell we're not still acting the way these people do in the 25th century.

Anyway, they haven't made any big secret out of it. These people do not agree with Roddenberry Trek and they have said so in one interview after another. That is why Star Trek is dead. It died when he did.

Re: VOY S5: Course: Oblivion

If Voyager passed the demon planet a year ago and the crew was duplicated, then the crew started to search for Voyager with the hope of getting a cure for the cure, eventually, Janeway made the decision to return to the demon planet. Why is the real Voyager is travelling in that direction again toward the planet that it had passed a year ago if they are heading to earth?

Re: TNG S5: Ensign Ro

I have to disagree with the assertion that you never see androgynous women in real life. You do. Just not all over the place. And it's not always a woman who is assuming an "unnatural" personality to make a political statement or something. Some women just are like that and I actually like it a lot as long as they're not impossible to get along with. It's possible for a woman to come off that way because she's a sociopath but is not always the case either. The other possibility might be that she's bi or pansexual or a lesbian but that's not always the case either.

Life is complicated. People will general conform when they have to. Nonconforming people usually have a much harder way to go in life. So the question is this - What path would a woman chose if there were never absolutely any obstacles or consequences to just behaving in whatever way comes naturally?

Re: SNW S1: A Quality of Mercy

Great great great review, Jammer. Great review. Great.

I didn't quite understand why I didn't like this episode as much at the time, but now I do after reading this review. It was Paul Wesley. He portrayed an interesting captain, but it didn't have much to do with Captain Kirk. And nothing at all related to William Shatner. As you pointed out, it was a tough casting assignment that unfortunately was not successful. In comparison, portraying a young Mr. Spock was no easy assignment either, but Ethan Peck has nailed it with his combination of reverence and reference to the original while providing a fresh performance for 2022. Another way to go would have been to jettison the original altogether. That works in SWN for a relatively minor character like Nurse Chapel, but it would not work for Captain Kirk.

Also agree that the ending of the episode was completely unnecessary. Did someone at mission control decide they needed a cliff hanger? They threw one in during the last 30 seconds. And as a cliff hanger, it was not anything close to Will Riker crying out, "fire!"

Jammer- this is the place for Star Trek fans to go for discussion and review. Over the years you have provided us a great service, and helped to develop a great online community. Thank you.

Re: PIC S2: Farewell

@Bok R'Mor

"PIC really is just Star Trek: Patrick Stewart. We all love Stewart (rightly so) but the indulgent self-inserts that began with the Argo in 'Nemesis' have now completely eclipsed the Jean-Luc we remember; my understanding is that Stewart only signed on for PIC on condition that Picard would be presented/explored in a radically different way (i.e. more like Stewart himself).

So we have a Picard who is not written like Picard, and who does not act or sound like Picard. He is a completely different person. It's profoundly disappointing - no matter how much I understand that Stewart was tired of the character and that he had particular topics he himself wanted to explore.

As a consequence it is hard to see PIC and actually see Picard on screen. I just see Patrick Stewart doing things that Patrick Stewart is interested in, as Patrick Stewart. The suspension of disbelief isn't there most of the time, for me at least.

As I said further up this thread: when Stewart hugs de Lancie farewell it moves me because I interpret it as two dear colleagues who've worked together for 35 years embracing and saying their goodbyes to each other. And I think back to 1987, and the passage of time, and how distant we all are from our own earlier lives. I don't actually see Picard and Q."

Yep. Well said. Except I don't believe for a second Patrick Stewart needed to wreck the Star Trek name just to do his own show. He could have easily gotten someone to indulge him with an actual Patrick Stewart reality show or something if he really wanted to.

I don't know what I saw when Picard hugged Q but I think it must have been a sign that Picard has dementia and that's why nothing in this show makes any sense.

Re: PIC S2: Hide and Seek

Well, I mean, look at something like daytime soaps (I haven't actually watched any in a long time) but some of them were on for decades with the exact same characters with a new show every single day of the week.

Paramount had a winner with TNG and they got greedy for the big movie money and started throwing everything they could think of at the wall to see what would stick (in terms of new shows based on Star Trek).

TOS wasn't cancelled as a strategy to get movies made. Canceling TOS was a mistake that was later acknowledged as such. They got lucky with TNG and they pissed it away. Yeah. OK there was some pretty good stuff in DS9 but I could have totally lived without Voyager. They were in their groove with TNG and when they took it off TV, they never got what they lost back. The combined output of every single show (and movie) that has come since TNG was canceled is less than what TNG could have been if they had just kept doing it until there was some sign that people were tired of it.

Re: PIC S2: Hide and Seek

It just gets worse and worse. I know. I'm doing it to myself. This thing is a zombie passing itself off as Trek.

Re: PIC S2: Mercy

@KiminAsia

Yeah, sure. If someone hasn't seen excellent Star Trek, they might (somehow, though I don't know how) find this satisfactory.

I don't think the declining quality of Trek is necessarily confined to Star Trek. As much as I hate to be that guy blaming the internet for everything, I've noticed that a lot of movies and TV shows seem to have been hastily written by someone with ADHD and/or serious memory impairment. Which is not me disparaging people who have difficulties. Just me saying that writers used to be (universally) better at writing.

So yeah. You could take the worst episodes of TNG or DS9 or TOS and say "Star Trek has always had it's problems". Which is true. But in the past, you could overlook the bad episodes because the good ones weren't just good. They were outstanding. There has been none of that in Picard. None.

Probably they are writing while tweeting and checking their various pointless social media pages and the result is a script that doesn't remember what happened 15 seconds ago or has elements of the dumbest internet memes known to mankind integrated into it.

Re: PIC S2: Mercy

OK. This one was FAR more palatable but it is still a shining example of why you don't let people who can't juggle try to juggle a hundred very expensive items. Essentially, they're attempting to juggle priceless heirlooms (Paramount might own the rights to Trek but we paid for it and kept it alive for decades). I think they just might have been able to do something halfway coherent if they didn't have 30 things going on at the same time.

This is sort of like the plot of First Contact only it was done extremely well in First Contact.

Still, I hope they can keep things at least as watchable as this for the rest of the season.

Re: PIC S2: Monsters

I tell you, I almost feel like I need to watch it again to see if it makes any more sense but I just can't. It's 46 minutes long and I felt every second of it as though I were having a migraine. I think enduring it again would just make me need professional help.

Re: PIC S2: Monsters

After thinking more about it, I realize that the bad thing here isn't that they're trying to fill in the blanks on things like the Q and Guinan thing. It's that if they're going to do it, it needs to be as epic as it was when it was left unexplained.

IOW, this is exactly why I was leery of the entire prospect of the Picard show from the moment I heard about it. I didn't know anything about the people who were behind it but I knew they weren't the same people who made TNG what it was. I was not willing to take it on faith that these people were competent enough to take something that was great and fill in the blanks with material that was of equal quality.

Re: PIC S2: Monsters

@Frank A. Booze

Yes. I do think these writers have watched every episode of Star Trek. I think they watched it all and they hated it all and they wanted to kill it. This is the result.

Re: VOY S4: Scorpion, Part II

Long time trek fan, finally watched this two parter. Its pretty good! Although I have to state that compared to TOS, TNG, and DA9, VOY is a big step down overall.

Theres a lot of good ideas in this two-partner. Making a big bad that can wreck the borg is a good idea. I think they kind of missed the mark a little bit on the Species, something a little more animalistic/parasitic and even closer to Alien would have been more interesting IMO. It didn't need to come from another dimension, simply a parasitic organism that keeps the borg in check is an interesting idea in my opinion.

But like a lot of Voyager, the execution is kinda hokey. It often feels like the characters are going through the motions of a star trek plot and it just doesnt land. The "betrayal" of Chakotay to Janeway should be a reoccurring tension in the show, but it gets diffused very quickly here and feels perfunctory. The conversion of the Voyager with Borg tech feels very by-the-numbers. It feels like what a lot of Voyager feels like, which is decent ideas but the writers didn't want to put in the hard work to connect all the dots and sell the story. Even TOS took a lot more time trying set up the stakes and setting up the narrative. It never feels like anyone in Voyager is in real danger. They just bounce back after a few scenes with The Dr. It would be better if they were never in danger in the first place.

Overall, though, it works fine. Seven of Nine is a great idea for a character and looking forward to it. But to those of those saying this is somehow better than First Contact....... it just isn't... in character, plot, drama, or effects......

Re: DS9 S2: Second Sight

Avery Brooks was (for me) just terrible in DS9. The whole series. I don't remember one scene that I personally thought he was good in. He's the only reason I always pull back when I am considering watching DS9 through again. He just ruins every scene he's in. Every single other character was believable and well-played. Which made it worse.

Re: TNG S5: Time's Arrow, Part I

This episode (and it's 2nd half) might not be all that great in the context of TNG but when I compare it to Picard, if this episode is only worth 2.5 stars, there's not a single episode of Picard that's even worth 1.

Re: PIC S2: Watcher

"Picard being in the 21st century would be like one of us going back to the 1600's. It's just not groundbreaking. People in the 1600's threw their filth into the streets and then ended up with cholera plagues and mass death. We could easily go back and say "Look at how they're failing!" But then humans invented plumbing, discovered microbiology, etc. It's mystifying why modern humans are not given the same hopeful message... and that we need intervention from the 25th century to make sure that the 25th century even happens. There's utterly no message about the enduring human spirit here. "

Yep. And sadly, after I read your paragraph, i pictured not an indignant teenager rolling their eyes, who is none-the-less still passionate enough to discover their own enduring spirit....but an aging 30 or 40 something who is simply checked out and doesn't believe there is a future worth living for anymore.

It's almost like its written for a specific class of TV watchers today, who, at any age, might be some of the most pessimistic, isolated people who ever lived. people who get a tiny bit of a dopamine rush over the idea that things might get "really bad", and that's the biggest dopamine hit they get in their day.

Watching this episode of Picard literally almost felt like watching the news.

Re: DS9 S4: The Way of the Warrior

On repeated viewings I noticed something pretty slick the writers did, showing their effort to “play fair” and be internally consistent. Immediately after the scene where we see Martok (who is a changeling) and Sisko do a blood test by cutting their hand with knives, we have a scene where Odo is sitting in Quarks bar with other members of the crew. He is seen to apparently be drinking coffee, but he explains how the cup and the liquid are actually a part of him that he shapeshifted to be able to “appear to share the dining experience”. He shows how he can drink from the cup (reabsorbing a part of himself), and how he can refill the liquid in the cup when he wants to (we simply see the level of liquid start to rise as he says this), again via applied shapeshifting of his body.

I really appreciated this scene on repeat viewings long after I had become very familiar with DS9 as a complete series… why? The writers immediately, if indirectly, play fair with how they just showed the changeling Martok pass a knife-cut blood test; with Odo’s demonstration of changeling liquid manipulation, they are showing us how simple blood tests can likely be circumvented by changelings since Odo can manipulate liquid in a coffee cup to such a degree with intricate shapeshifting. I found it interesting and ironic how the Odo drinking and refilling coffee scene comes immediately after the Martok blood test scene. I doubt many people were sharp enough the first time around to realize what the writers were showing them and to say “hey, if Odo can do that I bet the changelings can get around the primitive blood test we just saw”… I certainly wasn’t, but it still is a sharp move on the writers part. It also provides some fuel for thought a little later in Homefront where Sisko’s father talks about how a smart changeling could suck up someone’s blood and release it on cue; with Odo’s demonstration in mind we know that his theory is plausible (although it differs from what Odo is doing but still it shows the detail with which Changlings can manipulate their body and liquids as a part of it).

I will say that while this episode is great and so is DS9 as a series and on a certain level I really enjoy the Klingons in it (especially in my initial viewing), I will say I agree with those who take issue with just how stereotypical the Klingons become on DS9… they become even more one dimensional and in a warrior/drunken buffoon on their time off sort of way. Even in TNG the Klingons like many Trek aliens were not very three dimensional, but they could still be taken seriously enough as having an interstellar empire (if one allows for an amount of suspicion of disbelief). In DS9 they become less and less sophisticated. Personally I like the portrayal of the Klingons in “The Undiscovered Country”… there it was not hard to believe that the Klingons, though a people with a strong warrior inclination, were intelligent and sophisticated enough to run an empire, especially in the upper levels of their society. Don’t get me wrong I also really like TNG’s honorable, in some ways samurai/Viking take on them, but I think there is room for all three visions of Klingons in order to have a more three dimensional race; characters like the upper crust we see in the Undiscovered Country as the race’s military brass, and political or at least intellectual leaders (I also like the Klingon leadership in TNG mostly though), perhaps scientists and scholars as well could behave that way, TNG’s portrayal of them for the race’s bourgeoisie level military officers (ie Galron and Kimpek, Worf’s brother), and then yes there is room for DS9’s stereotype of Klingons in the race’s rank and file soldiers/enlisted men.

Re: DS9 S6: Statistical Probabilities

I might well be opening a can of worms here, but over the past year I have drawn a huge number of parallels to this DS9 episode and some of the 'public health advice' based on mathematical models by real life megalomaniacs.