Star Trek: The Next Generation Rant

originally posted by: JoshuaCox
a reply to: intrepid

Let’s be real..

TOS wasn’t very good just a cool premis..


TNG made Star Trek.. it established the status quo and created its place in pop culture.

It's good.

You just have to ignore the jelly bean buttons and Kirk body doubles. If you can't look past that...then I don't see how you could really enjoy anything.

a reply to: Justso

"As we all know, at the end Data was saved."

WTF?!?! no spoiler alert?!



J/K I have all seasons

originally posted by: Autorico
a reply to: Justso

"As we all know, at the end Data was saved."

WTF?!?! no spoiler alert?!



J/K I have all seasons

Needed more Wesley Crusher and Lwaxana Troi eps

a reply to: NarcolepticBuddha

Majel was awesome

a reply to: NarcolepticBuddha

I don’t just mean the special effects..

Kirk way over acts..

The fight scenes are atrocious..

Some stories are decent but ALOT ARE SUPER childish.

Imho if star terk hadn’t been LITERALLY the only sci fi on television. It is never remembered..

However, it did craft a super cool universe that TNG , DS9 , exc just ran with..

a reply to: JoshuaCox

You're not of the body!

originally posted by: JoshuaCox
a reply to: NarcolepticBuddha

I don’t just mean the special effects..

Kirk way over acts..

The fight scenes are atrocious..

Some stories are decent but ALOT ARE SUPER childish.

Imho if star terk hadn’t been LITERALLY the only sci fi on television. It is never remembered..

However, it did craft a super cool universe that TNG , DS9 , exc just ran with..

It was the 1960s. Back then, what we would call overacting was almost the norm on every TV show. And Star Trek was (relatively) low budget (compared to what they had to work with in later years). In those days, they didn't have better actors to choose from. No one had ever heard of Star Trek so who wanted to be involved with it? They were lucky to get who they got.

Star Trek wasn't low budget anymore by the time TNG, DS9 and Voyager came along (Meaning they were pretty much willing to spend whatever it cost). The premiere of TNG was big news at the time because TOS had carried them so far for what it was and what it cost and how long it had been. And it wasn't a sure thing either. The first season of TNG was terrible and I gave up on it (more or less) after the first few episodes. Encounter At Farpoint is still watchable and a few of the first season episodes showed promise but most of it is hard to get through these days if you want to watch all 7 seasons.

The second season wasn't much better. I doubt that show would have gone 7 seasons if the third season hadn't been as amazing as it was. TNG was basically a miracle because it started out so drastically different from what people expected and because they managed to pull it out of the huge tailspin that was the first and (most of the) second seasons. After that, it soared.

Still remember the day it kicked in for me. Yesterday's Enterprise. I hadn't been paying much attention to it and only rarely caught an episode just to see if it ever got any better. I was in school and things were pretty hectic. When I saw that I knew that show was going to get better.

a reply to: BrianFlanders

I don’t consider “it had a low budget” as a good excuse for a show not being good, nor do I think “ it was a different time” is either..

Sure movies/TV quality has improved, but that’s what makes the modern stuff objectively better lol..


I agree 1000% about TNG starting slow.. most shows start slow since the actors haven’t really figured out their characters, yet.

originally posted by: JoshuaCox
a reply to: BrianFlanders

I don’t consider “it had a low budget” as a good excuse for a show not being good

Neither do I. Star Trek wasn't a bad show, either. For it's time, it's goals were very ambitious and it (demonstrably) more than accomplished them. In fact, I'm pretty sure Roddenberry never intended to have so much influence on the world. Like Zephram Cochrane, he probably just wanted booze, money and women. It just so happened.

Star Trek's legacy more than speaks for itself. It might be nearly unwatchable now for some people but it did what it needed to do and that's a success.

I agree 1000% about TNG starting slow.. most shows start slow since the actors haven’t really figured out their characters, yet.

TNG didn't just start slow. It started bad. It wasn't just the actors. It was everything. Many of the stories were as bad as any of the worst TOS stories. Even some of the ones that could have been pretty good (Like Conspiracy and Time Squared) were less than they could have been. Although Time Squared was MUCH better than Conspiracy, IMO.

a reply to: BrianFlanders

IDK..

I think what made TOS special was a great concept and set up. Not really the execution of the series itself ..

At that time the demand for sci fi was huge, but there wasn’t anyone filling that need.


If not for TNG , DS9 I don’t think anyone cares today. I think it would have gone the route of maybe Babylon 5, or some other show with passionate fans, but not mainstream sucess

originally posted by: JoshuaCox


If not for TNG , DS9 I don’t think anyone cares today. I think it would have gone the route of maybe Babylon 5, or some other show with passionate fans, but not mainstream sucess

Like Farscape.

a reply to: intrepid

And Firefly

a reply to: Autorico

Fire fly was the best sci fi series period imho..

I have rewatched prob 4 times.

I have nothing else to do, so I am replying to old posts. I hope this won't be a problem for anyone.

In any case, I have to agree with the OP; that episode is RIDICULOUS on so many levels.

The worst problem of it is that Data - a MACHINE - was even allowed to the academy in the first place, although clearly it's not a human being.

It's one of a kind, and yet it's treated as if it's like everyone, which everyone KNOWS it is not. Why would you do that? Why would you allow a robot or android to join academy? You might as well let animals or algorhithms join as fully equal 'students'. Data was never bullied in those academies, not that it would've felt anything even if it was.. none of it makes any sense.

Why would anyone, let alone everyone, treat a machine the same way they treat a human being, even if it looks like human and walks on two (artificial) legs?

It would be a COMPLETELY different thing, if Data wasn't an 'artificial intelligence', but if it was a shell, where a human soul can incarnate into, and has. Though then the human in that body would have feelings, emotions and all the human experience, and nothing basic would 'mystify' them at all.

This show, like every stupid sci-fi show and movie, tries to say that robots and androids, which are 100% machines, and have no living component, no human souls, etc. are somehow just as good and worthy as actual human souls, and have all the rights humans have.

Just because something -looks- like something, doesn't MAKE it something. The hollywood's viewpoint to androids and robots is the same as 'clones'. A clone of you - more accurately, your physical body - is NOT you (or even your physical body). You do not 'live forever' just because you have a clone made out of you and 'your memories are implanted' into the clone (which is so ridiculous anyway).

This whole episode even craps all over their own viewpoint; if a machine is 'human enough' that Starfleet lets it go through academy as individual, autonomous human being (although it's not), then HOW can that episode ever take place? Either it is seen as human being with all human rights and autonomy, or it isn't. This episode tries to have it both ways, and that's what makes it such a vomit.

Someone really didn't think anything through. They could be just as well talking about a laptop and laptop's rights to not be dismantled, if it doesn't want to, just because it's running some A.I. algorhithm that -seems- intelligent to clueless people.

Of course an algorhithm can't ever truly be intelligent, because intelligence comes from the soul, not from the body anyway. A physical body can hinder, limit or grant access to an already existing intelligence, but it can't create it or grow it.

This particular episode of TNG, as much as I like some others, is just so ridiculous, groan-inducing and stupid, and the main point is NEVER even talked about; what creates a human being, intelligence, where do rights come from and why, and why would Starfleet grant the privilege of being able to even be in an academy or serve as a 'member' in a spaceship instead of a 'tool' or 'utility' (like Enterprise's onboard computers), etc.

Soul is never mentioned as a requirement for human rights, and yet, it should have been. It's dangerous nihilism to start assigning 'human rights' to inanimate objects - or very animated, dead matter, like androids or robots. It devalues human life greatly, but people don't seem to see or realize that about this episode. It's basically demonic and satanic thing, but because 'Data is so sympathetic', people don't see it that way. They just want to give Data all kinds of things, as he seems SO close to being an actual human being, without realizing he can NEVER be a human being unless a soul incarnates into its body - and even then, it's that SOUL that's the human being, not the purely, 100% physical construction called 'Data' anyway.

It doesn't matter what it mimics or thinks it experiences, it's still just as much a machine as your laptop, and should be treated as such.

However, this show being sci-fi and having so many other good sides, I am willing to overlook that most of the time. This episode just brings it too much to the light, and that makes this episode cringy, unrealistic and idiotic in so many levels.

Data is a machine, and should never be confused with a human being. Data should always be made to sacrifice itself for ACTUAL living beings that are divine-created. A human being can't create life, Data is not alive. It's blasphemy to claim otherwise.

Data is nothing more than another Tower of Babylon, where people try to create divine works by themselves, or reach the Divine by physical constructs alone. It's appalling that this show did this kind of episode, where through all kinds of rationalizations and thought labyrinths, they try to justify this blasphemy and satanism, where human life has no value, because it can just be created from bolts by some 'scientist' (of course, because 'scientists' are the gods we are supposed to worship instead of the ACTUAL CREATOR OF LIFE).