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Another example from Just Before Streaming? Battlestar Galactica.

I’ve just started the final season on a re-watch run. Oh my god it has some Guffy Filler. Episodes which just don’t really advance anything.

But….given the show’s story and context? They do kind of work. They can help explore the tensions and boredom of the situation the Colonial Fleet is in. It’s all fine and well for the enlisted personnel of Galactica. But for others in the fleet? What’s there to do day in, day out? The filler sometimes explores that, helping the sense of realism.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
On modern Trek? To me it’s too focussed on being Big Glossy Action.

When I go back and consider what I loved about TNG and DS9 was the moral questions. I mean, I do enjoy Treknobabble and that silliness. But it was seeing our crews deal with tricky situations, trying to find The Best Solution. Often this was all pretty superficial (that Tasha Yar one. Yeah. The unfortunately, not sure they thought it through properly, racist one, Wesley And The Planet of the Hotties and Smashed Greenhouse). But when they went deeper?

When they went deeper, we got Drumhead, Measure of a Man, Chain of Command, In The Pale Moonlight and other classics but these are the titles that came immediately to mind.

That’s just kind of missing these days. And the shows are poorer for it.

If we could ever get you to enjoy Lower Decks you'd find they make the same judgement call that a lot of modern Trek is way too action focused compared to earlier.

And yeah the modern stuff lacks a lot of the maturity that you saw in shows likt TNG in the way characters behaved and related to each other.

I’ve tried, I failed. It’s just not for me.

But….this from TNG’s second season, when it was still finding its feet.




Where is this in modern Trek?

One reason for the 25/26 episode seasons was to fill 52 weeks a year. 6 months of new episodes, 6 months of reruns, and a week or two for specials or other interruptions.

Perhaps obvious if you grew up in the broadcast age, but might not be if you grew up with streaming as the norm.

And I totally agree. Yes, 25 episodes is HARD, but that's why you have large casts so once or twice a season Barkley or Geordi would get the spotlight. It led to things like the original Lower Decks episode.

Across the multiverse, Blink (the one with the weeping angels) is generally considered one of the best Dr. Who episodes ever. The Doctor is barely in it.

Though I will remind people Section 31 exists, and sucks more than anything has ever sucked before.

And so there’s every chance Paramount just has completely the wrong people running the show.

Honestly I feel like a LOT of sequels and reboots these days have the wrong people running things. There's lots of passion there for sure; but when you consider that Who, Star Trek and Star Wars are all doing really well but also butchering their original lore in extreme ways or creating multiple "failed" shows that just fail to really grasp the original fandom - you do have to wonder what the heck is going on.

I’m mixed on Star Wars. I get why folks don’t like certain films or shows, but I’ve enjoyed them all.

But? Alien Romulus, Prey and Killer of Killers all show there are good writers out there who understand the subject matter.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Though I will remind people Section 31 exists, and sucks more than anything has ever sucked before.

And so there’s every chance Paramount just has completely the wrong people running the show.

Because it's based on the worst Star Trek show that doesn't make a lick of sense (continuity-wise): Discovery.

But, I now firmly believe that Discovery is an Alternate Universe that started with First Contact, then Enterprise to Discovery and Strange New Worlds.



Because it's hard to wedge those stories and their tech levels (Holo-Emmitters in every room) into the original series/TNG/DS9/Voyager.

Let alone the fact that the SNW Enterprise is 1.5 times bigger than the TOS Enterprise... to go with the bigger than the Sovereign-Class Enterprise E, USS Discovery. (And later Disco-A ((because refits get new ship names??)) when it gets launched into wacky future-land).

/Rant

Ugh. What a terrible show. Who would've thought that Ensign Rivers from Enterprise would make a better Starship Captain and have the better episodes?

We are definitely in a new time line.

It explains why SNW Kirk looks different. We are all products of a one in a billion collision of a specific sperm and egg at a specific time.

Your great-great-grand is late for work and too tired about 9 months before your birthdate, and guess what? 9 months, 10 months, 2 years later a quite similar but different person pops out. A brother or sister, but not you.

Any time travel, no matter how quiet you keep it, runs the risk of altering births, and people down the road.

This always bugs me in any alternate timeline story. If the Nazis won, if Roman never fell, if JFK wasn't shot, if I had some beers with the grandpa I never met on the wrong day... I would not be here. There might be someone with the same name and same parent, but not me.


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LOL Strange New World S2 Episode 3 CONFIRMS just that!

"This was supposed to happen in 1992 and I have been stuck her for 30 years!"

There we are.

Finally got bored enough to watch Section 31. That was… a rather mediocre generic sci-fi action movie. There was nothing Really Star Trek about it besides a couple organization name drops. The organizations themselves don’t even matter. No classic aliens feature in it. None of the tech or setting really fits. It was all just… really generic. Also man were all the mysteries and who done its really obvious.

Did you find the Oirish Not A Vulcan as irritating as I did?

Not just the god awful accent. But also the “this is my encounter suit, meant to blend in, so naturally I’ll take every pain possible to ensure I stand out as a Very Unusual Vulcan” thing.

Or indeed that Georgiou not only knew what the device was and what it did, but also the sodding thing was gene locked to her and her alone, making the entire pursuit frankly worthless?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I’ve tried, I failed. It’s just not for me.

But….this from TNG’s second season, when it was still finding its feet.




Where is this in modern Trek?

Strange New Worlds is definitely my favorite of the 2010s+ Trek.

Lower Decks is cute, but SNW is a drop everything put that on, kind of show. And by 'drop everything' I mean wait a few months for the run to complete then subscribe to Paramount for a month before dropping it again.

So to answer your question:

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Ad_Astra_per_Aspera_(episode)

Una/Number One is put on trial for joining Star Fleet despite genetic enhancements and lying about it. Well done indictment of Federation hypocrisy, good analogy for present politics, nice legal maneuvers. The whole show is worth watching.

I’ve seen SNW, will give it a re-watch.

As perhaps unsurprisingly given one has been around for nigh on 40 years (jeebus) and the other barely 4 years, I’m of course more familiar with TNG.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Did you find the Oirish Not A Vulcan as irritating as I did?

Not just the god awful accent. But also the “this is my encounter suit, meant to blend in, so naturally I’ll take every pain possible to ensure I stand out as a Very Unusual Vulcan” thing.

Or indeed that Georgiou not only knew what the device was and what it did, but also the sodding thing was gene locked to her and her alone, making the entire pursuit frankly worthless?

That guy was terrible. Just a technically from Star Trek but not really detail since they have the IP. Hell, the super weapon was kind of pointless, it was just a bomb? Like, not even a terribly good one? They detonated it within transporter range and got out fine. And that thing was supposed to disrupt all of Starfleet?

I've been watching Voyager lately, and I've noticed something across all shows.

A lot of Trek episodes take place in caves.

Like a lot.

I wonder if the cave is the most used set in Star Trek.

They literally made an entire joke skit about it in Lower Decks XD

It's the same as how a LOT of shows often use the same outdoors desert region and rocks. Mostly because it was one of the few accessible rural areas that could be reached in a day without having to travel to a set and thus cost the company way more (I believe inflated too because of limits imposed by the actors unions too).

Caves are often used just because the studio is in the middle of a city and they don't have ready access to loads of outdoor regions so they've got studio caves to setup.

But now explain why half the planets in Stargate are covered in canadian pines

Spread there by the Goa’uld.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
But now explain why half the planets in Stargate are covered in canadian pines

That's easy - plantations

What's always more confusing is why every single world basically has an unguarded stargate even right in the middle of their territories. Heck a good many aren't even anywhere near the settlements they harvest/enslave. You'd think those portals would be right in the middle of their settlements - with guards around them and everything.

Esp if you know there's a group of pesky humans always popping up destroying stuff

 lord_blackfang wrote:
But now explain why half the planets in Stargate are covered in canadian pines

And Gravel Pits. Both SG and Doctor Who liked using gravel pits for sets, and occasionally bumped into each other in neighboring pits.

Even back in the early days Dr Who loved a good gravel pit!

 Overread wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
But now explain why half the planets in Stargate are covered in canadian pines

That's easy - plantations

What's always more confusing is why every single world basically has an unguarded stargate even right in the middle of their territories. Heck a good many aren't even anywhere near the settlements they harvest/enslave. You'd think those portals would be right in the middle of their settlements - with guards around them and everything.

Esp if you know there's a group of pesky humans always popping up destroying stuff

Oh easy the defended ones blow up the drone, so they only visit the safe ones...

True, but even so!! Also amazing they never built their own irises or that the Earth faction never really made it a big thing to fit them onto other world Stargates.

Granted that kind of escalation is one they'd lose since it was ages before they had spacecraft to get around locked gates; but still you'd think locking down the network would have been a majorly important point.

For the Goa’uld, until us filthy little tech monkies decide to go ram raiding their worlds, there wasn’t really anyone to challenge them.

The Tolan homeworld was very well defended, but they had no space fleet. Provided the Goa’uld left them alone, they weren’t too much of a bother.

But the Tau’ri are thievey and clever. The second we get off our homeworld, there we are, nicking everything and anything that isn’t nailed down, and if given half a chance, prising the nails loose, then swiping the nails as well.

The Tau’ri are the galaxy’s Nac Mac Feegle.

 Overread wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
But now explain why half the planets in Stargate are covered in canadian pines

That's easy - plantations

What's always more confusing is why every single world basically has an unguarded stargate even right in the middle of their territories. Heck a good many aren't even anywhere near the settlements they harvest/enslave. You'd think those portals would be right in the middle of their settlements - with guards around them and everything.

Esp if you know there's a group of pesky humans always popping up destroying stuff

I assumed it was common for the first attack to be sending a bomb through. That explains why you don’t want to build your city around it. Why there aren’t guards or defensive works….maybe the bombs got them?

 AduroT wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
But now explain why half the planets in Stargate are covered in canadian pines

And Gravel Pits. Both SG and Doctor Who liked using gravel pits for sets, and occasionally bumped into each other in neighboring pits.

Don't forget Power Rangers. Them alien monsters loved attacking Earth by invading gravel pits when they weren't attacking cities.

I was always amazed at the ability for them to rebuild cities almost on a weekly basis!