Star Trek turns 50!

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luke strawwalker
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#1 Star Trek turns 50!

Post by luke strawwalker »

SO, the original Star Trek premiered 50 years ago. This of course led to one of the greatest sci-fi, forgive the pun, "enterprises" in modern entertainment history. The Star Trek franchise, alongside the Star Wars franchise and the Bond franchise, is one of the biggest and most successful entertainment empires of all time, despite getting off to a slow start and essentially being sidelined for basically a decade during the 70's in the time between the cancellation of the original series on TV and the premiere of the first Star Trek movie featuring the original crew, followed by another five original crew movies, another 4 TV series over the next two decades, as well as several Next Generation movies. While the decline of the Next Generation movies scripts led to the "reboot" of JJAbrams and the so-called "Abrams-Trek" alternate universe (which is FAR too comic-book-like for my tastes-- I don't like any of the so-called "alternate universe" films).

Now, after another roughly decade hiatus from the small screen, CBS is trotting out a new Star Trek series, which looks interesting, but which I for one probably won't see until it makes its way into other forms of media due to the stupid choice of CBS to air the new series ONLY on their paid-subscription CBS streaming service. I for one refuse to pay for a subscription to some silly streaming service for only ONE show, because I have exactly ZERO interest in anything else CBS produces...

Oh well. At any rate, sitting here watching a rerun of Next Generation on "Heroes and Icons" broadcast channel, it's been basically 30 years since the premiere of the Next Generation that returned Star Trek to the small screen.

Later! OL J R :)
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Joe Wooten
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#2 Re: Star Trek turns 50!

Post by Joe Wooten »

I got really bored with Star Trek TV shows after a while, with the exception of DS9, as they got way too preachy of the glories of socialism and the uber state.
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luke strawwalker
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#3 Re: Star Trek turns 50!

Post by luke strawwalker »

Yeah, me too. TNG was good, but it was just a little too neat, a little too preachy. Hence DS9 and then Voyager.

For me, it was just plain overload that led to burnout. I taped every single TNG episode, most of them in order. When DS9 came on, I watched it too-- for the first three seasons. Saw every episode of the first and second seasons, but after TNG went off the air, and DS9 started turning even more "dark and gritty" from it's "TNG but darker and grittier" roots, I only watched about maybe 3/4 of the shows in the third season, and then quit watching it altogether. I saw MAYBE a stray episode here and there. I watched Voyager the first season pretty regularly, but then got disenchanted with it as "DS9 on a starship". I can appreciate the idea-- lots of writers and fans said that the "nobody argues in the future, everybody gets along" idea simply made TNG VERY hard to write for, and precluded a lot of interesting interpersonal relationships (or else if they did argue, it had to be because of the "gimmick of the week", like Sarek coming aboard with Bandai Syndrome and affecting the crew, some alien infection, mind control, etc.) BUT, I HATE "dark and gritty" with a passion... Never liked it since the first "Batman" film which was SO "dark and gritty" you couldn't see what was happening on-screen most of the time!

I think they overdid the "interpersonal conflict" thing on DS9 and Voyager... after all, if I want to see people arguing and sniping at each other, I'd go visit my parents... LOL:) (and become, willingly or not, and active participant). At any rate, I quickly lost interest in both DS9 and Voyager and only caught the sporadic episode here and there of either one until they went off the air. When I heard there was ANOTHER Star Trek series coming out, it was like "so what". I never even watched a single episode of "Enterprise" in its first run. Honestly at the time I'd rather watch TNG reruns or taped episodes than DS9 or Voyager.

Fast forward a number of years, and they started showing episodes of "Enterprise" on Sy-Fy or something on DirecTV (back when the "Sci-Fi" channel still had ANYTHING of interest on it whatsoever that wasn't mind-numbingly stupid). I watched Enterprise from nearly the beginning and was mad at myself for never having watched them in their first run. For the most part, it was a terrific show! Had a few stinkers here and there, but what series didn't, TNG included?

Fast forward a few more years, and now I've got an 11 year old, and TV is a complete and utter wasteland. I gave up on broadcast TV back in the late 80's-- there hasn't been ANYTHING on network TV that has interested me in the least since the early to mid 90's, period. Everything I watched was on tape or DVD until we got satellite TV in the mid-2000's. Sadly, satellite TV has become just as much of a wasteland as broadcast TV has become, only now we're paying about $100 bucks a month for it. We'd have already dropped it if it weren't for "Vikings" and "Turn-Washington's Spies". That's about the only two shows left on there I have any real interest in watching. The Science Channels aren't about science anymore, the History Channel is full of alien conspiracy nutjobs, any successful show that they DO dream up, as soon as it gets a following, they make 10 clones of it and then "add a lot of drama" to the original to try to keep it on top of the heap, and ruin it (like they did with Ax Men, etc) or cancel it outright (like they did with Swamp Loggers). So, we're just about a hair's breadth from giving satellite TV the old heave-ho. We're currently switching over to streaming TV and movie services, as we've been buying the old 70's TV series on DVD's for awhile now anyway (Star Trek TOS, Six Million Dollar Man, Bionic Woman, A-Team, etc.)
The shows from the 60's, 70's, and 80's beat ANYTHING broadcast on regular TV in the last 20 years.

Actually, since we're at the inlaws in Indiana, they have some excellent alternatives on broadcast TV of all things. My BIL refuses to PAY for TV, at least the legalized robbery that satellite TV has become, so he uses the antenna. They do have Hulu (courtesy of us) and Netflix (courtesy of his oldest boy) but that's it. Broadcast stations like COZI-TV, Heroes and Icons, Antenna TV, and MeTV broadcast a bunch of the good old shows, from "Adam 12" and "Emergency" to "the Munsters" and "McHale's Navy". Now Heroes and Icons is showing all five Star Trek series from beginning to end in order. I only wish we could get these channels down near Houston where we live!

Actually, Keira and Betty and I have been watching all the Star Trek shows, in order they were broadcast, from beginning to end on Amazon Fire Stick TV. We watched all the remastered original Star Treks and the movies on DVD/Blu-Ray, and then watched The Next Generation on streaming, and finished DS9 a few weeks ago, and we're up to season 3 of Voyager, currently. Plan to finish watching Voyager when we get home from vacation, and then Enterprise. Keira is excited about Enterprise, looking forward to seeing it from the previews they've been showing on Heroes and Icons.

I've also become completely disenchanted with the direction that the studios have taken with the Star Trek franchise. Abrams-Drek is simply awful-- his "Star Trek" movie abomination was bad enough, "Into Darkness" was PURE UNADULTERATED CRAP. This new movie looks like more of the same. I doubt I'll even waste money or time buying a ticket for it. (BTW, the new "Star Wars" isn't much better). I started watching the "Star Trek Continues" and other web-based series and find them, especially "ST Continues" to be INFINITELY better than ANYTHING the mainstream studios are putting out! They're putting out FAR better stories with almost as good of a production value as "studio Trek" can produce on a TINY fraction of the budget the studios blow on total wastoid scripts and hare-brained story ideas by no-talent hacks like JJ Abrams and company making cartoonish shoot-em-up style "comic book movies" (another genre I totally despise and am sick to death of...) IF ONLY they'd hand the reins over to some of these web-based groups... "Star Trek Axanar" looked to be better than ANYTHING that studios have put out in the past decade... which is probably why they pulled the rug out from under them-- it was going to show them up!

Oh well... there's still the original six movies and even the first couple TNG films were good (except "Nemesis" which sucked big time) and reruns of TNG, DS9 (which Keira and I did thoroughly enjoy; I guess now that we've seen just how 'dark and gritty' the crap on modern TV has become, DS9 looks a lot better than it did years ago) and Voyager (which we're also enjoying), and of course Enterprise, which really surprised me when I watched it a few years ago. Sure beats ANYTHING they're putting out now...

I SERIOUSLY doubt that CBS could produce ANYTHING "Star Trek" related that would interest me in the slightest, subscription based streaming or not. At any rate, I won't be purchasing a subscription to a service for ONE show... especially an unproven one by a network with a *oops you said word #2-poor track record of making anything remotely watchable in the last 20 years...

Later! OL J R :)
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#4 Re: Star Trek turns 50!

Post by Rocket Babe »

We saw the new movie last Friday. Over all I'd give it a B-. Kind of getting tired of every time out the ship is destroyed.
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#5 Re: Star Trek turns 50!

Post by Joe Wooten »

Rocket Babe wrote:We saw the new movie last Friday. Over all I'd give it a B-. Kind of getting tired of every time out the ship is destroyed.
That implies an incompetent captain. A real world Navy would cashier him after the first one.
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#6 Re: Star Trek turns 50!

Post by bernomatic »

I originally thought after the second lost ship, he would be lucky to command a shuttle craft. :(

Then I thought along the lines of Joe, unless for some reason, like they gave him a medal for a previous action, they felt it would reflect awkwardly on the service at which point they would give him a non-mobile command, say a shipyard or outpost or...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihcd1XInF24
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#7 Re: Star Trek turns 50!

Post by Rocket Babe »

It is amazing to me that the original Enterprise and later the Enterprise D made it through hundreds of episodes but neither could last more than a couple of movies. Same with the "alternate" movies and their shields seem to be non existent. Much like the U.S. Mexican border everything gets through.
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#8 Re: Star Trek turns 50!

Post by bernomatic »

I didn't crash and destroy any starships, or sneeze, just in case anyone was wondering. ;)
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luke strawwalker
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#9 Re: Star Trek turns 50!

Post by luke strawwalker »

Ah, Melody Patterson-- she was "Danno" from the original Hawaii Five-O real-life wife...

Later! OL J R :)
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#10 Re: Star Trek turns 50!

Post by bernomatic »

luke strawwalker wrote:Ah, Melody Patterson-- she was "Danno" from the original Hawaii Five-O real-life wife...

Later! OL J R :)
I don't recall if "Deathwatch Dan" on that "other forum" noted her passing, but we lost her almost a year ago at the tender age of 66.

Rest In Peace, Wrangler Jane.
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