Josh-da-man

Klingon honor is a fairly recent invention; I think it started with Worf. If you go back and watch all of the pre-TNG stuff, (namely TOS, STIII) the Klingons are just assholes, and never go on about their honor.

GrouchoFan

THANK YOU!! I thought I was the only one who noticed that. It's like when TNG started, the Klingons and Romulans swapped species characteristics. In the two big TOS episodes featuring Romulans (Balance of Terror and The Enterprise Incident), the Romulans are ALL ABOUT honor. The Klingons just wanted to kick your ass and steal your assets.

dhmac

Yeah, the Klingons changed a lot as the Star Trek franchise grew. In TOS, they were just scheming and backstabbing, basically just primitive culturally and not very civilized. Then in ST:TMP, they were given an all-new look and their own language for the opening scene to kick off the big screen movie and that got the ball rolling on revised Klingons. But that was just how the new Klingons looked and sounded, it said very little about their culture. The new Klingons caught on with the fans, so they were brought back in STIII which then added a little on their culture but not much. So, yeah, it really took the character of Worf to develop the new Klingon social structure fully, which lead to all the honor and such now being standard Klingon traits.

The funny thing is after now being used to the revised Klingons, it's a bit discombobulating to go back and see them as they originally were. I think no other race has changed as drastically in the Star Trek universe as the Klingons have.

harryfielder

Before Patrick went into space I got to have words with him on a UK show called Mayberry..... see my IMDB.....

resinrats

I remember being shocked they killed off the girl at the end. Guess I wasn't used to not everything turning out OK back then. I always had the thought when DS9 came around & was put in a prision camp, that later on he and the girl from Lower Decks would be liberated from a prison camp. The Cardassians just faked her death & sent her to prison.

argh923

Uh...what?

Shazam

Watch the RedLetterMedia Generations review on YT, he's a very good critical thinker, and he blasts the movie apart.

Red Dog

Yeah - his breakdowns of the Trek movies and Star Wars I-III are gold.

lisadoris

Thanks for that heads-up. I wasn't familiar with this site and that review was just vicious (and totally true).

First Contact IMHO the best of the Next Generation films. The Borg are back and way scarier than we left them in "Descent." We have time travel which gets a little old in terms of a plot device but I'm willing to let it go (I don't think the idea of the temporal Prime Directive gets introduced until DS9). James Cromwell and Alfre Woodward are both really good in this film and have strong and interesting characters to play. The scene where Lily convinces Picard to destroy the ship was really powerful. You know Picard is taking all this personally, as well he should, and none of the regular cast is willing/able to call him on it but Lily can and does. Picard's breakdown and realization was well played.

I know some folks don't care for the whole Borg Queen idea but I get why it was done and I think the execution of the concept was effective. For folks unfamiliar with Trek and the back story on the Borg, you have to have an actual villain for the audience to root against so here ya go. My guess is that faceless, nameless enemies don't go over well with test audiences. I've seen Alice Krige at conventions and she is a trooper for making it through all that makeup and that outfit. She and Spiner had good chemistry so the seduction of Data as a means to an end worked. Cromwell played an excellent drunk and the idea that we view historical figures in a far more flattering light than they existed in reality is good food for thought.

There are a few minor things that could have been fixed but this film is such a huge improvement over Generations that I'm willing to forgive them - or just ignore them. I watched the sf debris review of First Contact and his discussion of why Sisko wasn't at the helm of the Defiant in the this film had me in tears I was laughing so hard. It also made me want to start DS9 earlier than I had planned. Now I'll go and watch the RedLetterMedia review of the film.

Josh-da-man

Yes, they are, but his "schtick" gets annoying really fast.

Red Dog

I don't know. When they were pointed out to me, I think I went through about 8 of them in a row.

lisadoris

Now that I've watched RedLetterMedia's review of First Contact I feel like such a dope for actually liking the film. His voice annoyed me and the dead wife thing threw me the first time he brought it up. If the first two films get that kind of treatment his review of Nemesis, which I think sucks pretty hard, must be eviscerating. Gotta get through Insurrection first.

dhmac

What I like best about RedLetterMedia's Star Trek reviews are just how well he knows the Star Trek universe. He picks out a lot of things in the movies that go against things in the TV series and then shows specific clips to back up what he says while making fun of the movies.

His Star Wars prequel reviews are just as good as the Trek ones, but I notice his other non-ST/non-SW reviews aren't nearly as good when he doesn't have that same level of knowledge of the universe that the movies exist in.

lisadoris

Got through Insurrection last night. So I'm going to start with the good: the character moments in this film were the best of the TNG films. Seriously, one of my favorite moments is when La Forge is watching the sunrise. You really understand how frustrating it must have been for Burton as an actor to wear that banana clip on his eyes for seven years. He plays the moment brilliantly and I just wish Frakes would have held the shot for 2 seconds more. The on-again/off-again relationship with Riker and Troi is finally cemented. Yes they were clearly trying to sex-up the film but as Worf said at the end, their feelings have been obvious from day one so thank you for acknowledging it and moving their relationship to the next level. Data's mocking Riker's smooth skin illustrated that he understood humor in a much better way than him laughing like an idiot in Generations. Data's behavior on the planet after the Enterprise arrived is another matter.

The bad. This might be why you shouldn't watch everything back-to-back because you're way more likely to remember stuff. So before yesterday, I was pretty ambivalent toward Insurrection. It wasn't the best and it wasn't the worst. Now, this movie pisses me off.

So let me see if I understand the plot correctly. Picard gets his underwear in a bunch because Starfleet wants to remove the Baku without their consent so that the regenerative properties of the planet's rings can be harnessed for medical purposes. But back in the season 7 episode "Journey's End," Picard may not have liked the fact that he was being asked to move the First Nation's people without their consent to keep the peace with the Cardassians but he was damn sure about to do it. In "Journey's End" Picard didn't remove his pips, he didn't fight with the First Nation's folks and he didn't send the Enterprise to scream about this injustice to anyone and everyone who would listen. He simply sighed and was ready to use force under Wesley stepped in. And then he got pissed because Wesley stepped in and called him on how unethical Picard's decision were.

So besides the fact that the Baku are white and the First Nation's folks aren't, what's with the differential treatment? So moving the First Nation's folks would have prevented more conflict with the Cardassians would could cause lives. I get that. But as we saw at the end of the episode, worse case scenario is that the Federation washes their hands of the First Nation's folks and tells them they're on their own (which in the end is what they did anyway). At that point any fighting wouldn't have involved the Federation so the conflict and lost lives would have been contained.

Even though the Sona's intentions were less than honorable, we physically see how the ring's properties can enhance, prolong, and maybe even save lives. If my timeline is correct, the film takes place sometime in Season 6 or 7 of DS9 so the Federation is at war, medical advances would be insanely helpful. We also learn that the Sona are dying so the Baku elders are perfectly willing to let their children die and those deaths are the Baku's fault since they exiled them off the planet in the first place.

The Baku's unwillingness to leave, and Picard's defense of them, is a far cry from the Star Trek II mantra "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one." In this case, the needs of 600 people outweighs helping billions of people.

I know heroes don't have to be perfect but this time around I just found the Baku completely unlikeable. My other issue with the film is that there was only one or two moments throughout the entire film were I felt any sense of danger. The first moment was during the Briar Patch chase which was over 1 hour into the film. F. Murray Abraham is an incredible actor and has played really threatening villains but in this, I got nothing.

My one last issue which is so minor but for reasons I can't fathom it has always bothered me. In the scene where the crew confronts Picard about leaving to help the Baku, Data says that the rings may be effecting the crew and forcing them to act immaturely. Fine. But Data barely has the sentence out of his mouth before Crusher blurts out "what would you suggest we do" or something to that effect. Bad case of McFadden anticipating her line rather than listening to what was going on in the scene. There should have been at least one beat between the end of Data's sentence and the beginning of Crusher's. At least try to make us believe that this whole thing isn't completely scripted. *end rant*

Next up is Nemesis and hopefully my new found appreciation for Tom Hardy will help me to like this film.

Meglos

Also: the Enterprise's joystick controller.

Defiant1

The final standoff between between Picard and Ru'afo on the collector is just horrific on so many levels. Not only does Son'a equipment use our numbering system as a countdown, the background is a literal blue/green screen (can't remember what colour). They were supposed to replace it with something suitably sci-fi but ran out of time/money.

lisadoris

Nemesis was pretty much as bad as I remember it but after my complete implosion about Insurrection, I do have a new found respect for Nemesis. Here's my main issue: Nemesis is derivative. It takes the plots of Khan and [/b]Insurrection[/b], mashes them together with lackluster performances and an unconvincing villain.

I know Spiner wanted Data to die in the film, fine. His death was supposed to be this meaningful, altruistic moment like Spock's death but because of all the stuff that came before it in the film, Data's death just feel flat. In Khan Spock's death hits the characters and the audience because Kirk had never really faced death prior to that moment and because there was no other solution to the problem. There was nothing Kirk and co. could have done earlier in the film that would have prevented the warp damage which led to Spock's sacrifice (given the ass kicking the Enterprise endured in the nebula, even raising the shields when they initially encountered Reliant probably wouldn't have helped).

In Nemesis however, Data's sacrifice was preceded by a long line of questionable decisions which renders Data's action completely unnecessary. Though this didn't effect the ending, when Picard meets Shinzon for the first time, he takes Riker, Troi, Data, and Worf leaving La Forge and Crusher in charge. Now both characters proved they are competent to command the Enterprise but when a "predator" decloaks in front of you, you might want to leave Riker on the ship.

I can almost understand taking Troi to the planet if you want a sense of whether or not Shinzon is telling the truth but her presence seemed to only lead-up to the mind-rape she experiences later. Really, is this all Troi is good for? This is what the third time she's been violated? Do women serve no other purpose on the Next Gen universe? I really can't wait to see Kira in action again.

Back to bad decisions. So they find the positronic signal and all the different android parts. Their first thought is to reassemble Data's brother because that worked out so well when they met Lore. Seriously, no one even brought up the idea of maybe waiting and letting Starfleet reassemble B4 on the off chance that he turns out to be evil or, as the case was, a dupe for their enemy. That's an entire plot point that could have been avoided if the characters used history and common sense.

After all hell breaks loose and Shinzon is about to deploy the evil weapon, why on earth does Picard go? He says it's something he has to do but come on, your duty is to the ship and to the Federation and a 60+ year old man taking on who knows how many physically stronger aliens is probably not the best recipe for success. Just like in Generations Picard has Shinzon in his sights with a weapon and he hesitates. If he had just blasted him then, we could have avoided the rest of the pointless fight that occurred after that. Actually, why isn't Picard's first thought to blast every control panel on the bridge to stop the weapon from being activated? Why not save the energy and either put a shuttle craft on self-destruct and remote pilot it to the Scimitar or beam over a phaser on overload to take out the weapon.

While not a bad decision per se but just a head shaking moment, why didn't that lovely fleet of Federation ships ever come to the Enterprise's rescue? You'd think as long as that battle took one of the other captains would have thought "hey, it's taking them too long to get here, why don't we head to that nebula which looks like the perfect location for the Enterprise to be ambushed."

While Shinzon was a slightly more interesting villain than Ru'afo, there was nothing about his behavior that suggested he was Picard in any way, shape, or form. The arrogance is certainly there but not much else. Having that childhood would certainly make one bitter but why was his anger pointed toward the Federation? It was the Romulans who enslaved and beat you, after disintegrating the civilian government, literally in this case, why not set out to control the rest of the empire. After participating in the Dominion war why does everyone on Romulus seem so eager to fight more battles?

I have more questions but I'm sure folks are tired of my ranting. Am I completely misreading this film? I think sfdebris mentioned this in his review: the Next Gen films were all about action and that really wasn't the core of what the series was about. I think this is just one of the reasons why the films are so problematic. Thoughts?

mikehunt

I haven't watched nemesis many times because I don't really like it, and it's been a while since the last time but didn't Picard beam over?
I think I remember them saying they were out of torpedoes but couldn't they have rigged up some other kind of explosive and beam that over instead? Maybe a bottle of antimatter or 15 hand phasers tied together in a bundle and all set to overload? Maybe they couldn't beam in right next to the generator, I don't remember.

lisadoris

Yeah Picard beamed over after they ran out of torpedoes.

They clearly had all manner of handheld weapons since there was a wonderful montage showing the crew picking up their weapons. Even if they couldn't pinpoint exactly where Shinzon's weapon was, they could have rigged enough handheld weapons to blow the entire ship. Hell eject the warp core close to the ship and beam an overloaded phaser to the same location and that would have worked too. Anything to keep the emotionally compromised captain from trying to take on Shinzon's entire army and Data having to blow himself up to save the day.

resinrats

It alway bothered me that they didn't even mention Lore in the movie. Would have taken 2 lines of dialog.
"Could this be Lore"
Data - "No, Lore has a type R Positronic CPU, this is a type W" (or something like that)

lisadoris

I'm back and ready for my fave Trek (at least it was the last time I watched, we'll see if it holds up).

"The Emissary Pts 1 & 2" I think that this was the strongest pilot of all of the Trek shows. You meet your characters quickly, you get their back stories and motivation, and with the exception of Bashir, I actually liked all of the main characters right away. Even Dukat is intriguing when he arrives. One of the cool things about re-watching shows like DS9, B5, or Angel is knowing how the characters are going to evolve over time. I still enjoy TNG, though clearly not as much as I used to, but there was very little growth for the majority of the characters.

Anyway, we learn about Bajor, a hint about their religion, meet the Prophets, see Sisko give Picard the stare of death, move an entire station, and find a stable wormhole. I am a huge baseball fan and I love that the writers used baseball throughout the series. A lovely touch to baseball history and subtle nod to Sisko's racial background is the fact that he's wearing a Homestead Grey's hat when he uses baseball to explain linear time. Most folks don't even notice the cap and few would even know what the "G" on it stood for, like I said, nice touch.

"Past Prologue" thank heavens Visitor changed her hair starting with this episode! We meet plain, simple Garek in this episode too and from the beginning you know his character is fun and shady all wrapped into one. The fact that Garek pegged Bashir as the rube of the command staff shows how smart he is (and how clueless Bashir was in the beginning which is one of the few character missteps in retrospect).

"A Man Alone" is Odo's story. It's interesting how honest the characters are with each other in the beginning. When Sisko suspends Odo and tells him he believes he's innocent, Odo rightly points out that Sisko doesn't know him from Adam so why should he think he's innocent. Good point. We also see the love/hate relationship between Odo and Quark when the latter provides helpful information to the former after they have an argument. The devil you know right. The B story shows us that Keiko is on DS9 too and she's not happy. Miles got his promotion and hauled his family to Bajor and Keiko essentially had to give up her career. Thankfully the writers didn't just let this point go and we get a school.

mikehunt

DS9 holds up, I recently went through it again and even the first and second seasons that I remembered not being as good were still decent

lisadoris

Even though I don't love all of the episodes in DS9's first season, it's already holding up a whole lot better than TNG's first season which is just unwatchable now. On with the show

"Babel" reminds me a bit of TNG's "Darmok" in that I really do not know how the actors pull off talking gibberish and make it look convincing. I felt bad for O'Brien since nothing on the station worked properly and he just snapped. Not a bad episode but not a good one either.

"Captive Pursuit" interesting Prime Directive episode where you really start to understand how different DS9 is from TNG. Picard would have sent Tosk on his merry way to live out a life of shame. O'Brien figured out a way to help Tosk once he finally realized 'hey, I'm not on the Enterprise, I can bend the rules a bit to help someone.' Sisko may have chewed O'Brien out after the fact but he also helped him.

"Q-Less" at this point I really dislike Q and I'm SO not looking forward to his antics on Voyager. This episode was a mess. The regular cast basically served no purpose here it was all Q and Vash. The only redeeming aspect of this episode was Sisko knocking Q flat on his butt while reminding us that he's not Picard. Brilliant and cool. Thankfully Q doesn't come back.

"Dax" is one of my favorite episodes of the first season. We get a lot of background info on Trills which we need since the DS9 writers completely re-wrote what TNG set up about Trills. We get a real sense about the friendship between Sisko and Curzon Dax and at the same time learn what type of person Jadzia is. It would have been simple to just admit to the affair to save her skin but Dax was willing to die to save the reputation of someone she never actually met. Nice to see Gregory Itzin but every time I saw him on the screen I flashed back to what a snake his character was on 24.

"The Passenger" has an interesting premise that reminded me a lot of the film Fallen and Batman:Return of the Joker. What happens if someone is able to hijack your consciousness. Not a pleasant thought. The cool thing about this episode is that it was one of the few early episodes where Bashir wasn't completely annoying.

"Move Along Home" now this is one episode I never liked. The whole trapped inside a game motif reminded me too much of a holodeck malfunction episode. I can only imagine what the Vulcans met them in the Gamma Quadrant. Watching Quark beg for mercy was kinda fun though.

lisadoris

"The Nagus" I'm in for a long haul with the Ferengi episodes. I'm happy that the Ferengi are now the bumbling capitalists we know and love instead of the "menace" TNG tried to make them into. On the other hand, I don't have a lot of love for the Ferengi episodes. It's always fun to see Wallace Shawn as Zek.

"Vortex" was an OK episode. It's real purpose was to let us know that Odo wasn't the last of his kind and that his people exist in the Gamma Quadrant. That little nugget doesn't mean much at this point in the show but it will become important later.

"Battle Lines" always struck me as an interesting episode. The premise of a never-ending war where the two sides never die is frightening to say the least as is the idea that war continually perpetuates itself until neither side remembers why they're fighting. We also deal with how soldiers evolve out of the war mentality as Kira realizes she has to transition into civilian life not just physically but mentally and emotionally. Her evolution as a character begins in this episode. Even though Kai Opaka was only in one episode before this one I felt bad about her being left behind, a testament to the actress.

"The Storyteller" is the first of many O'Brien/Bashir buddy episodes. Talk about character evolution: in this episode O'Brien is begging not to be on the same shuttle as Bashir (and seriously, in the first couple seasons you couldn't blame him) and then they develop a full-on bromance.

Nick Martin

They were originally going to keep the girl alive after all, by bringing her back in a DS9 episode.

If you recall the season 4 DS9 episode "Hard Time", it was Ensign Sito who was to be the focus of the episode, going through the same turmoil that