My impending addiction to Star Trek!

[AR3S_TGL]

So my throat swelled up on Thursday and I had time off life. With the side effect as my voice is weird. So I grabbed the TV remote and found someone had recorded a Star Trek movie (2008). By the end of that evening I wanted a pet Tribble and a Kligon dictionary. Now I am watching the Next Generation as my parents love Jean Luc Picard! Comment below of the ways you got addicted to Star Trek!

[Superfluous J]

One of the best TV-related things I've ever done is to watch all of Star Trek, from the very first episode of TOS to the very latest movie (which back then was just the single Star Trek movie with the new cast plus an old Leonardy Nimoy) in production order.

It took over a year. I watched:

TOS (a.k.a. Star Trek, which I'd never watched all the way through but saw some episodes as a kid)
TAS (a.k.a. the animated stuff. Not great, but the better episodes are better than TOS's worst)
TNG (a.k.a. what most of us think of when we think of Star Trek, though I'd only watched all of the first 2 seasons so I missed some of the best TV ever)
DS9 (Which I'd never seen a full episode of)
VOY (This was hard to get through, I won't joke. Though after the first few seasons it gets much better)
ENT (Surprisingly good. Season 3 is one of the best full-season arcs in the whole franchise, IMO)
And of course every movie, trying to watch them in the exact place where I'd have seen them when they were released, assuming I was watching the TV shows on live TV.

I went from someone who liked Star Trek okay to a fairly big fan by doing this, and I think I'm a much better geek for it.

Edited June 13, 2017 by 5thHorseman
Corrected which season of ENT was the season-long arc.

[AR3S_TGL]

3 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

I went from someone who liked Star Trek okay to a fairly big fan by doing this, and I think I'm a much better geek for it.

I already feel like a geek. My all time favorite was the one with V'ger, as I watched with my Dad when I was really little.

[Superfluous J]

4 minutes ago, AR3S_TGL said:

I already feel like a geek. My all time favorite was the one with V'ger, as I watched with my Dad when I was really little.

That was the original Motion Picture, a.k.a. Star Trek 1. I also loved it as a kid but these days it's not all that great. At least half of the movie is "Look at this awesome special effect! Let's linger on it for a few minutes and then pan, and linger again. This was expensive, man, so let's pan back the other way for a few minutes. And now, let's have the actors react to how great the effect is. Aw what the heck, let's pan one more time."

[TheSaint]

10 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

That was the original Motion Picture, a.k.a. Star Trek 1. I also loved it as a kid but these days it's not all that great. At least half of the movie is "Look at this awesome special effect! Let's linger on it for a few minutes and then pan, and linger again. This was expensive, man, so let's pan back the other way for a few minutes. And now, let's have the actors react to how great the effect is. Aw what the heck, let's pan one more time."

That was the movie that almost single-handedly killed the entire franchise. They had to tap-dance something furious to get Paramount to greenlight a sequel, and one of the conditions the studio forced on them was that Gene Roddenberry was kicked out of any creative role. I hear the Director's Cut DVD is much improved.

[razark]

I grew up watching the reruns on TV.
I've seen quite a few of TAS, but not all of them.  I managed to pick up a cheap box set of them, but never finished watching through.
I saw TNG when it came out.  The first couple of seasons weren't that great, so I didn't get hooked on it until later reruns.  I still haven't seen the whole series.
DS9 is one I haven't seen, except maybe a handful of episodes.  (How can it be Star Trek?  It's on a space station.  Where is the "These are the voyages..."?)
Voyager I missed most of because I started working, and didn't manage to catch it when it was on.  The episodes I did manage to catch seem like they ran out of ideas and filled it in with Borg.
I enjoyed Enterprise when I caught it in reruns later.
The Motion Picture always seems like it was a rewritten episode that got padded out to make a film.  (Probably because that's exactly what it was.)  The padding does seem to be a lot of "Hey!  Look at the cool effects!" shots, as well.

The rest of the movies were not bad, some better than others, though.  I stopped watching after the Borg/time travel one.  I'm still not sure why they skipped straight from 4 to 6.  Odd numbering, I guess.

I'm interested to see what happens with the new series.

 

Of the reboot movies, I've seen the first two.  Not really thrilled with them.  Just not what I'm looking for in a Star Trek, I suppose.

 

3 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

ENT (Surprisingly good. Season 2 is one of the best full-season arcs in the whole franchise, IMO)

Wasn't it Season 3 that was the season-long arc?

 

 

[Superfluous J]

1 hour ago, razark said:

Wasn't it Season 3 that was the season-long arc?

you are absolutely correct. I've edited my post to reflect that. Thank you

[adsii1970]

3 hours ago, TheSaint said:

That was the movie that almost single-handedly killed the entire franchise. They had to tap-dance something furious to get Paramount to greenlight a sequel, and one of the conditions the studio forced on them was that Gene Roddenberry was kicked out of any creative role. I hear the Director's Cut DVD is much improved.

No, you have to understand who the main star of TMP was... It wasn't Kirk, McCoy, or any of the other cast. The main star was the U.S.S. Enterprise.

TMP was intended to be a launch of a new series, but Star Wars release killed it.

[Nuke]

i posted in the adam west thread about how i had watched batman reruns after school. st:tng reruns were also being shown in the previous time slot. many times my school bus did not get me home in time for the show, so i learned how to program the vcr to record it for me. incidentally i was the only one who knew how to do this. i think i rotated like 5 different tapes, which i watched at my leisure. it wasnt long before i found myself owning all the movies and going to star trek conventions and generally being a nerd. i kind of grew out of it in my 20s. i do keep up with the newer stuff but it seems like its a mere shadow of what came before. i recently binged the tos which was totally worth doing. i saw 5 or 6 episodes i hadn't seen before. debating whether i should binge tng and ds9 again, the former ive watched to death and the later havent watched since the original airings. no interest in re-watching voyager or enterprise, but looking forward to discovery.

[StrandedonEarth]

While I knew the ST basics (Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Scotty against the evil Klingons), I'd never actually watched ST until TMP, and I was rather underwhelmed.  Later, I made friends and was eventually roomies with a Trekkie, so it wasn't long before I'd seen most things Trek. This was mostly enabled by the Space channel, which would play TOS, TNG, DS9, and Voyager back-to-back every day. This was about when Enterprise came out as well, but I never made it to season 3. I guess I'll need to check into that. 

I did enjoy all of them but of course they all aired the occasional turkey ( the TNG episode I call "Beavis and Butthead at Megadeath" especially stands out as one I would never want to see again). The Dominion War story arc of DS9 stands out as one of the best parts. 

I think I've seen all the movies. TWoK was great of course, but apparently I'm in the minority by liking ST4: TVH, but I liked the humor in it. 

[KerbMav]

7 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

The TNG episode I call "Beavis and Butthead at Megadeath" especially stands out as one I would never want to see again

Which one would that be?

[linuxgurugamer]

On 6/12/2017 at 5:35 PM, 5thHorseman said:

That was the original Motion Picture, a.k.a. Star Trek 1. I also loved it as a kid but these days it's not all that great. At least half of the movie is "Look at this awesome special effect! Let's linger on it for a few minutes and then pan, and linger again. This was expensive, man, so let's pan back the other way for a few minutes. And now, let's have the actors react to how great the effect is. Aw what the heck, let's pan one more time."

Also known as Star Trek, The Motion Sickness.

I watched Star Trek in the 60s growing up during the real Space Race to the Moon. There was a 25 year gap between the end of the series and the first movie Big Empty field in until it came out, I stood for 6 hours in the freezing rain to watch it the first movie on opening day. After the first 15 minutes of the movie and the constant viewing of the new Enterprise I felt disappointed. The next generation was good Star Trek Voyager was good excellent actually and I've been a fan all my life

[Urses]

I can't realy say i am a StarTrek fan. But i like to look in from time to time. My way in was realy crazy by the way. It begun with the german "Spaceship Orion" and the old british "UFO Organization SHADOW"...

But my personal favorite in StarTrek universum is Enterprise with Com. Archer....

I have somehow twisted Taste....

Funny Kabooms

Urses 

Edited June 14, 2017 by Urses

[StrandedonEarth]

1 hour ago, KerbMav said:

Which one would that be?

Oh geez, I have no idea what it was actually called. Picard on a planet trying to hammer out a treaty or understanding with a species that spoke in (cultural?) references, culminating in "dumbS and dumbS at someplace," referring to some event in the past where these aliens worked together or made an agreement or treaty or some such. 

[KerbMav]

25 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Oh geez, I have no idea what it was actually called. Picard on a planet trying to hammer out a treaty or understanding with a species that spoke in (cultural?) references, culminating in "dumbS and dumbS at someplace," referring to some event in the past where these aliens worked together or made an agreement or treaty or some such. 

Oh wow, did not expect that one to be the one so bad in your opinion!

[StrandedonEarth]

14 minutes ago, KerbMav said:

Oh wow, did not expect that one to be the one so bad in your opinion!

Well, I'm sure there were worse *cough*wesleycrusher*cough* but that one stands out for some reason, probably cuz I thought it was stupid. Who would speak *only* in references, anyways? Makes no sense. Was there one I should be disliking more?

Edited June 14, 2017 by StrandedonEarth

[Spaceception]

I was more of a Star wars fan, than Star trek, I don't know why, I just didn't like watching it, then one day, I don't exactly remember when, my dad turned on star trek (the 2009 one) and I watched it because I was bored, long story short, I can't decide if my favorite series is TNG, VOY, or ENT.

I also really like first contact, and all of the reboots so far.

Edited June 14, 2017 by Spaceception

[Superfluous J]

2 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Oh geez, I have no idea what it was actually called. Picard on a planet trying to hammer out a treaty or understanding with a species that spoke in (cultural?) references, culminating in "dumbS and dumbS at someplace," referring to some event in the past where these aliens worked together or made an agreement or treaty or some such. 

You mean "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra." Yes. I hated that one too.

I liked the concept. A species whose communication was so esoteric that the Universal Translator couldn't help Picard and he had to actually come to an undersanding with the creature on a personal level.

However, it left me wondering, if their entire communication system is built up on - essentially - memes... how do they learn to talk? Do they give all their children lifetime access to their own culture's version of knowyourmeme?

Stargate did it much better, with Daniel forging an understanding between Humans and the Unas.

[StrandedonEarth]

On 6/14/2017 at 6:00 AM, 5thHorseman said:

"Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra."

Later, the Universal Translator was updated to translate this phrase as "Beavis and Butthead at Megadeath," a widely understood  reference.*

*In the 2363 holodeck remake of Beavis and Butthead (a widely acclaimed blockbuster hit) the pair rebuild their friendship after getting into an epic fight over a drumstick tossed into the crowd at a Megadeath concert. This was hailed as such a textbook example of diplomacy and peacemaking that it became required viewing at StarFleet and the United Federation of Planets. 

Edited April 1, 2018 by StrandedonEarth
"true story" link broke

[Nuke]

megadeth, the wimpiest one of the big four. i recently got into slayer and dont know what i was missing.

incidentally when i stopped being a trekkie i became a metalhead.

Edited June 14, 2017 by Nuke

[EricL]

My parents introduced me to Star Trek when they showed me TNG and TOS. And since then, I have been watching the other spin-offs (particularly DS9).

[Red Shirt]

I almost missed this thread. I think most of you are too young to get the importance of TOS. Sure the effects are meh by today's standards. The stories are small and sometimes silly, but the series changed a generation in ways I can think of no other show that compares. A least that is my opinion. 

I remember Lost In Space premiered the previous year. The early black and white episodes had great promise I thought and then they went bubble gum and lost it. So happy when Star Trek hit my TV. Saw every TOS episode when first aired, then again and again in reruns. I now have the remastered DVD set for when I need my fix.

I had great trouble warming up to TNG. To me the problem with it was it just tried to be bigger in every way and that lost the heart of it for me. I watched all of DS9 and Voyager, preferring DS9. Actually thought the under appreciated Enterprise was the second best of all the series.

I like the new movies however if I have to watch them destroy another Enterprise I'll scream. What are we up to know - NCC-1701ZZZ? Just stupid. Stop it! And quit being ridiculous with suspending all physics because it is considered exciting to fly in atmosphere. 

 

[Nuke]

forbidden planet cast the mold for this type of sci-fi. star trek just brought it to the living room.

or even metropolis, which set almost every scifi trope for the following 30 years and you still see some of them today.

Edited June 15, 2017 by Nuke

[StrandedonEarth]

On 2017-06-14 at 2:00 PM, Nuke said:

megadeth, the wimpiest one of the big four. 

Fitting for a wimpy episode, no?

[Nuke]

4 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Fitting for a wimpy episode, no?

to be fair i like most of the big four, anthrax is the one i really couldnt get into. thats the political end of the thrash spectrum, where megadeth crosses into from time to time. but still thrash bands tend to have good musicianship. but in my opinion slayer is the only one that hasnt devolved into dadmetal in their old age (im pointing at you metallica).

Edited June 16, 2017 by Nuke