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Star Trek is better than everything


Unlucky Bastard

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Just finished watching "Past Tense" for the first time.

 

How the _hell_ did I ever miss this in my initial watch? Immediately one of my favorite Star Trek episodes. A powerful story that moved me to tears in a couple moments, this two-parter is why people get upset when they see the "Star Trek" name attached to a bunch of shooting, fast ships, make-out scenes, and destruction. 

 

It could only have been told in Deep Space Nine, and only in its earlier seasons, before it got so consumed with all the Dominion War stuff and the bogus cartoony magic religion prophecy junk. There are so many great little moments that add so much depth to the characters, particularly Sisko and Julian.

 

If I had one shot to prove to somebody that Deep Space Nine is worth watching, this one would be one of the top choices.

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3 hours ago, woj said:

 

An intelligent, level-headed article on the Mary Sue? Maybe there _is_ hope for a more Star Trek-like future. 

 

Thinking of it, this has some of the best guest performances on Star Trek that I've seen. Poor man's Robert DeNiro did a great job as a (stereo)typical gruff dude who works for a check with not a single care towards the suffering around him, eventually morphing into a more compassionate person that sees the humanity in the whole situation (while still being true to the gruff wiseguy). One of my favorite moments of the whole thing was when he, another hostage, and Sisko were debating baseball, before the National Guard stormed the building.

 

Frank Military has a similar transformation, on the opposite "team", being an apathetic punk who just tries to milk the painful state of society to preserve himself as he's no doubt felt pushed to do. Gradually his compassion subtly comes to the fore, while never breaking character, an impressive feat on both the writer's and actor's part.

 

The dude who played Webb brought out the determined everyday, genteel family man who reluctantly ended up pushing for a revolt. Though Sisko and Webb never really have a true "getting to know each other" talk, you can feel they have a close relationship under adversity, and though it's never mentioned, the subtext of two fathers bonding, with Sisko empathizing with a man who wants to make a better world for his son and family, is a powerful undercurrent, and it's telling that Sisko's reaction to Webb's death is one of the most blatantly emotional we ever got from him.

 

Tina Lifford didn't have _too_ much to do, on the surface, but in a lot of ways she's the show's conscience, being an employee who clearly disagrees with the sociopolitical climate, but feels powerless to change it, bound to resonate with many of us when confronted about the harsh state of the things we see happening around us. She delivers some of the most powerful lines in not the episode but perhaps Star Trek as a whole, and she delivers it with chilling distance and resignation. A great performance from an actress I've never heard of before (she's also goddamn gorgeous, and looking her up she's definitely aged very well). 

 

 

I think that I actually prefer this episode to Far Beyond the Stars: though I love that episode, it covers my favorite period of history, and was my introduction to Deep Space Nine, this one feels so much more dramatically compelling, and the two parts really flesh out the world and characters to make everything hit so well in the second part.

Also, while I love Deep Space Nine and consider it the best Star Trek series, I feel like the show, ironically for its great and nuanced depiction of humanity, felt dorkier and dorkier as it went on.  I can't quite articulate why, as many of the best and most powerful episodes came from the later seasons, but...I don't know, it's like the show got so into itself and the intricacies of its costume alien drama...I can definitely see why it wouldn't appeal to people the same way say Next Generation has. And even Far Beyond  the Stars has this vibe to me, being wedged so deeply into the Dominion War, that I prefer the "detached" freedom that Deep Space Nine existed in when Past Tense aired. 

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10 minutes ago, Nick Parker said:

I feel like the show, ironically for its great and nuanced depiction of humanity, felt dorkier and dorkier as it went on

 

I don't know man, that first season was dorky as hell.  Maybe we're defining the quality differently, but episodes like "Move Along Home" and "If Wishes Were Horses" (aka the Rumpelstiltskin one) are so cringey to watch now.  Like for me dorky = lame.  And a lot of early DS9 can be super lame.

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5 minutes ago, Disco Stu said:

 

I don't know man, that first season was dorky as hell.  Maybe we're defining the quality differently, but episodes like "Move Along Home" and "If Wishes Were Horses" (aka the Rumpelstiltskin one) are so cringey to watch now.  Like for me dorky = lame.  And a lot of early DS9 can be super lame.

 

I don't remember most of those. :D

 

I think you're right in that we define dorky differently. A lot of those early episodes are lame beyond belief, and maybe they're dorky as well, but a lot of the later episodes are super-dorky but still really great, if you've bought into the show. See it from the awareness of an outsider, though? Eugh.

 

Of course with episodes like the one where Kira and Jake get possessed or whatever and have that stupid-ass laser beam magic duel that has since dominated movies, you get the best(worst) of both worlds.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Grading the Star Treks

 

A
The Next Generation Seasons 3-7
The Original Series Seasons 1-2
2009
The Wrath of Khan


B
First Contact
Into Darkness
The Undiscovered Country
The Voyage Home
Beyond


C
The Original Series Season 3
The Animated Series


D
The Next Generation Seasons 1-2
The Search for Spock


F
Generations
Nemesis
Insurrection
The Motion Picture
The Final Frontier

 

 

I pulled the audience ratings from Rotten Tomatoes for all the main Star Treks. It’s not scientific but it’s a little interesting, if rather what you would expect. TV fans turn out with high scores for their favorite seasons; and the crowd-pleasing “even movies” and the reboot movies fare well.

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Bill Shatner had so much charm back in the day but damn those trekkies were strange.  Anyway, cute early Star Trek mania interview that shows what life was life just around the time Star Wars came out.  We were strange people back then!

 

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Yet Star Trek is constantly revelling in hatred and xenophobia, it deals with it every time they encounter another race, and is most definitely not free of poverty - for Earth and The Federation maybe. 

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46 minutes ago, Arpy said:

Yet Star Trek is constantly revelling in hatred and xenophobia, it deals with it every time they encounter another race, and is most definitely not free of poverty - for Earth and The Federation maybe. 

 

Sexist too!

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  • 2 weeks later...
2 hours ago, Disco Stu said:

 

 

 

I saw that yesterday. Looks like those Rick and Morty dudes got to Star Trek earlier than we thought!

 

 

Is this actually what Discovery is like, is that embarrassing? What's almost as bad is some commenters claiming that Barclay should have been relieved of duty as well, and justifying the hot brat's behavior.

 

 

The only redeeming factor is the dude who voiced the coach in Home Movies. 

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Star Trek is about people working together. The Barclay character was great because he's a shy socially awkward recluse that people initially can't work with who becomes a well-liked integral crewman.

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3 hours ago, Disco Stu said:

 

 

This is the modern, socially progressive world in which we live. 

 

The man has age that should bring experience, but the younger woman has the rank, so she dismisses him and anything she doesn't want him to bring to the table. It looks like he dies as a result, though I haven't seen the episode and in Star Trek, dead isn't always dead. 

 

It looks dreadful but relevant to the SJW movement. We've had decades of Kirk, Picard, and Riker dismissing women and their contributions.

 

Turnabout is fair play. 

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10 minutes ago, woj said:

The man has age that should bring experience, but the younger woman has the rank, so she dismisses him and anything she doesn't want him to bring to the table. It looks like he dies as a result, though I haven't seen the episode and in Star Trek, dead isn't always dead. 

 

It's a Short Trek, which are short one-offs that generally don't bleed into the main plot. In fact, is this the one Giacchino directed? It plays like something Giacchino would direct. I think it's something Giacchino directed.

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36 minutes ago, Nick Parker said:

 

It's a Short Trek, which are short one-offs that generally don't bleed into the main plot. In fact, is this the one Giacchino directed? It plays like something Giacchino would direct. I think it's something Giacchino directed.


Nope.

 

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt11075922/?ref_=m_ttep_ep_ep2

 

One thing is clear: no one is at the wheel.  I’ve never been one of those Roddenberry loyalists who think every new Trek should pass some idea of what he would do.... but come on.  That ain’t Trek.

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