Star Trek

[Stoned]

I've decided to watch Star Trek (the original) via Netflix. Oh my god, each episode thus far (I'm currently on episode 6) has been absolutely fascinating. The fighting is really lulzy though. So who here is a Star Trek fan?

 

[zeus9860]

Not me, but switch Star Trek with The Walking Dead and i'm in. :roll:

 

[Dridmar]

I could never get into the walking dead, and it didn't help that the episode I watched had little to no action. I could watch Maury and be more entertained at the 'You are NOT the father!' moments.

Now to star trek, haven't seen the original and I don't want too. I've always wanted to watch TNG but don't have the time to right now. Watched Voyager though, and liked it. My favourite episodes are when they get sent back 90's Earth. Future's End iirc.

If/When I do go watch tng i may have a harder time adjusting to the older special effects.

 

[Thothie]

Still blows my mind that there are people running about today who didn't grow up with Star Trek.

TOS was an innovative series for its age, though these days it looks like a misogynist patriotic sh*tfest, I'm sure. Granted, the bulk of that is just machismo dripping off young Shatner in such torrents that you practically need to put a drip tray under your television to stop it from soaking the floor. But, believe it or not, it came from an era where having a black person on the television, much less a female officer, was considered radical - much less having her kiss the lead male - even if it was against their will at the time. (First interracial kiss to air on TV, IIRC.)

A lot of Roddenberry's philosophy managed to sneak its way in there, even if there were at least two episodes that were just absolutely hilarious for every one that had any depth. A few that had both aspects, I suppose - that wonderful episode where Kirk winds up reading the preamble to the constitution comes to mind. (Episode 52 spoilers)

Still, the whole, "man needs pain to grow" theme comes up so many times that it just makes you sick after awhile, as Kirk sets out to "liberate" whatever paradise-of-the-week he's found. Roddenberry was apparently on a "Brave New World" anti-decadence kick at the time.

TNG suffers from almost the opposite problem, being far too liberal a show to even air on network television, in today's polarized nation. The show does offer quite a bit more consistency and depth than the original series, but has its share of pure-terror and action episodes as well. Still, it is jam packed with parables that remain relevant today, more so, as it seems very few people actually ever learned from them.

TNG is pretty much unique, among sci-fi series, as it rests on the premise that mankind not only took to the stars, but socially evolved to the point where the average person was more morally sound, living in an utterly utopian society. In other words, it had a positive outlook on the future of humanity as a whole, where all other science fictions I can name range from mankind not having improved at all, or more often, having fallen into some sort of dystopian spiral of greed - yet still somehow managed to reach the stars, only to see even more extreme evils emerge.

Of course, Roddenberry never manages to explain, or even give an inkling towards, how we got from the society we see around us today, to his dream world.

The rest of the Star Trek spin-offs were all coughed up after Roddenberry's death, and, for the most part, do not share his vision nor philosophy - usually falling into patterns that could have been done just as easily by any other sci-fi show. Then, today, we have Michael Bay's movie, which just leaves the question, "Why did we even put the Star Trek brand on that?" - and no doubt left Roddenberry spinning in his grave... Or his orbit, rather, seeing as how we sent his ashes into space. Rather insulting to have a reboot of the Star Trek series that misses the entire point of Star Trek - but then again, wasn't all that long ago we had "The Passion of Christ" reboot of the Bible, that managed not to cover a single biblical teaching in three hours of S&M.

Both TOS and TNG were made in an era where space travel still seemed a viable achievement (more so TOS, I suppose - things were looking a bit more desperate come TNG's era). The thought process that went into writing them was never able to predict or address the fact that we became more interested in manipulating the value of illusionary currencies, than in the survival of the species. I suspect, if Roddenberry was alive today, the show would take on quite a different theme.

 

[Thothie]

Not me, but switch Star Trek with The Walking Dead and i'm in. :roll:

Meh, Walking Dead... After they decided to torture a perfectly able bodied young man with no loyalty to this more hardened group of survivors they so feared... I was all, "F*ck you nutcases - you people deserve whatever the f*ck you get!"

Show takes itself too seriously. Shoulda had Joss Whedon direct, or some such, and taken a theme closer to Woody Harrelson's "Zombieland". It's just really hard to take zombies seriously, especially when they are slow, and attracted to sound to boot... Seems a string of ghetto blasters would resolve this whole problem right quick. Tounge-in-cheak with just enough horror and drama to keep the conflict tense woulda been better. At least take the "Highschool of the Dead" route.

Either that, or take "The Crossed" approach... Where it's not so much a zombie virus, as it is a "just makes you unbelievably fucking evil" virus... Man, that comic is some of the harshest sh*t I've ever seen! (And I've seen some sh*t!)
(I'd link it, but that's some seriously rated X stuff...)

...Maybe I can crop something that gets the point across though...

Yeah... That sums it up pretty well... ><

 

[FER]

Blame night of the living dead. Just like how the majority of the anime became girly since evangelion, every zombie media tries to be drama and have some half assed social commentary or something.

Now this is zombie material http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhIoqKud_DU

 

[MrJohnson]

Grew up with Star Trek on TV, but watching TV every day wasn't ok with my parent in my younger days, so it was an occasional thing, when I got a computer I quit watching TV completly

Nowadays I always think I should watch everything star trek, but always forget about it.

What I liked most were episodes with an unknown lifeform/threat/virus/disease, you know, the mistery thing.