Episode 3.1 "The Next Generation" Discussion Thread

SPOILERS!!!!



This. I hate the grim atmosphere. And everything is SO DAGGUM DARK!!!! Just as I noticed from the trailers. I don't think anything gets over a certain lumen.

First thing I noticed right off the bat was YAY THEY BROUGHT BACK THE COMPRESSION RIFLES, THE BEST DESIGN STAR TREK WEAPONS EVER!!! Then They went and ruined it. Beverly had to pump it after each shot....like at shotgun. Like what function does this have for an energy weapon? Also, it has less shots than a shot gun before the power cell is depleted. In Nemesis, they shot a heck of a lot more shots. Also, she shoots one alien and he "Poofs" (Not vaporize because I don't think these showrunners knows how that works). But when she hits the other alien it just wounds him and he hits the floor, then she walks up to him and shoots him at point blank range to make him "Poof". It leaves ashes behind btw. 

For those of you that don't know the way "Vaporization" works is that the Phased energy is so intense that it disrupts the molecular bonds of an entire object. Basically all molecules lose cohesion and separate into individual atoms. 

The uncomfortable closeups is rampant still in this show. I especially hate it when they do it with food, Like the Intro to Captain @$$H0L3(I can't remember his name and I don't care, to me he's Captain @$$H0l3). (God I hope he dies a horrible death). Bad mouthing an Admiral, even retired will get your command stripped from you in RL, just so people knows that.  I'm thinking Miss Potty Mouth Admiral is the one who gave this guy his command from season 1. Their personalities match perfectly. And what the hell is with starfleet anyway? Is there no honor or principles anymore? Like this version of the future is more Dystopian than present day society. 

The show is still badly edited to the point that there 47 minutes of no progression. We just literally sat through a 47 minute plot setup. No one liking this has any business complaining about Star Trek the Motion Picture. 

On the bright side...since we need some light because its so daggum dark, At least so far, this season is taking place in space. It is STAR Trek after all. I don't want to be stuck in 21st century L.A. 

I tried going into this thing with an open mind, but It started slinging things in my face right off the bat. It seems technology has gone backwards. The flashlights are bigger, and what happened to our type-2 phasers? Everything is pistols now. Nothing projects a "Beam" of energy anymore. I mean Raffe is using a communicator that was in use 100 years before.

So my Ranking:  GET THESE PEOPLE SOME LIGHT BULBS. 

Yeah, it's 47 minutes of setup and that's terrible, but, to be honest, it's literally what I expected. But, if that's what's gonna happen at least there's some spacedock and ship porn.As for Pacing though, it still beats TMP's minutes of everyone silently flying through V'Ger.

And I don't expect Captain Anal Orifice to be alive all that much longer. The decks have to be cleared so that the old gang can actually be back in charge. But, yeah, I can see him going, "Yeah, no. With all due respect, neither of you can order a change in our mission, so there won't be one," but he was a needlessly rude prick from the first frame. From deliberately starting dinner without them, to basically dumping on Picard's gift instead of accepting it graciously, it seems all he's there for is for is the "establishment" for the OG crew to rail against and then celebrate his death when he dies.

Also, a pump-action phaser is nonsense. I'll buy it if it's, say, a form of overload; forcing two shots of energy into one discharge if circumstances call for it, but, in that case, she was just better off stunning them. I think it was supposed to be a phaser shotgun though, especially given the fact that it had virtually no ammunition in it. Poor weapon choice all around.

This episode wasn't as good as I'd hoped or bad as I expected, so it's still much improved from how S2 ended.

S2's premiere though, was way better than this.

It wasn't bad. I more listened to it than watched it the first time through.

I remember that TOS was partially based on the Horatio Hornblower series. Captain Anal Orifice is a classic stereotype of the time. The Captain whose more worried about spit and polish then doing their job. The kind that would never ever fire their canons in practice because that would get them dirty. They looked better sailing into port even if they rarely actually did anything important. They spent as much time in port as possible and tended to get promoted. Now we know where all the bad admirals came from. At least they borrowed a stereotype instead a reusing an overdone one at least once.

Decent start but season 2 started well.

SPOILERS!!!




Well.....I was rolling my eyes at the 3 minute mark already. I just can't abide the idea of watching 70 year olds in action scenes. Especially actors with chops that can do better than this. It all boils down to the poor writing. You can build drama, tension, etc... with good dialog and good plot. But I guess I'm asking for too much.



I don't understand what is this generation's obsession with darkness/the lack of lights. Is it supposed to add an automatic air of credence? Validity? I watched the recent Star Wars Bad Batch ep today and it also had scenes that were so dark you couldn't tell what was happening. 




Agreed. I was shocked by this. Of course, the captain was overly cartoonish but there was no reason to see Seven be so beaten down. It almost felt like watching an abused spouse. 

Ditto on the comments about 'callbacking' on several Star Trek movies. The intent comes off as so cheap to me. I'm sure there are hardcore Trek fans that are gaga watching a Starbase reminiscent of the one in STIII, the music, the artifact Galen gave Picard in The Chase, and other such stuff.  

The abused spouse analogy is good. To me it depends on the time frame. If this is two months its too quick. But a couple of years with an abusive boss in a job you really don't want to quit will wear you down. Any relationship work or personal where you can never ever do the right thing or live up to their standards will wear you down. He's likely connected to the big baddy and is trying to force her to quit. 

A thorough review, thanks! Yes, it was precisely the chemistry between Frakes and Stewart what makes me hand-waved the utter darkness of the atmosphere. And by darkness I mean not only thematic but cinematic as well, everything is a couple of level darker than it should be. Riker and Picard carry their scenes and roles with ease, grace, command and humor. And I am also here for it.

Thought this was very by-the-book in terms of the structure of its script, but enjoyable enough. Badass Beverly gets a total character makeover, which is no bad thing as she was underserved on both TNG the series and the subsequent movies and ultimately was, unlike Troi, rather insipid. (No disrespect to Gates McFadden. She did her best with the material she was given.) Some of that opening is really kind of dumb though, with the phaser rifle conveniently out of a charge already. The clicking sounds her alien adversaries made reminded me of the things in the TNG episode Schisms and I wondered if Bev has stumbled upon an invasion of the galaxy from another dimension and this whole season is a sequel to that inconclusive story.

The rest of this episode relies on the unfolding mystery and the genuine fun of most of it being a buddy movie with Picard and Riker. I could watch a whole mini-series with these two just hanging out, and the exchanges were lovely. I was also happy to see Laris briefly, a character with much potential sidelined in most of S1 and S2 (when they swapped her out for her tedious twin. Sorry, her ancestor).

Picard and Riker are an easy win, because their chemistry is fantastic and I loved every moment they were on screen together; moreso when Seven turns up.

WTF did they do to Seven though? Forcing her to use her childhood identity of “Annika Hansen” when she owns being ex-Borg Seven-of-Nine struck me as the kind of seriously off-key, top-down edict you’d get from a tone-deaf (usually white male, but not exclusively) boss in today’s work environments. In that sense, it’s bang-up-to-date in terms of identity politics, but it was quite painful to witness this most self-possessed of Trek characters plagued with the kinds of doubt that only powerful individuals within institutions can inflict. (Looking at you, Captain Shaw, and the Starfleet you represent.) It did seem at odds with how she’s developed in S1 and S2, but I’ll roll with it.

Good drama then! Okay, that worked too. Look forward to what happens next, and the inevitable reveal of Shaw as some kind of misunderstood hero who “has his reasons” for behaving the way he does. Equally, if he gets blown out of an airlock, I won’t shed a tear.

The pacing was kind of slow, but I think I prefer that given how well S2 began and then dropped off a cliff come ep 3. By using the buddy movie tactic and easing us in, it gives a better chance for us to get invested and for the tension to build.

Which brings me to all the callbacks - visual, stylistic, musical. I’m generally suspicious of too many stylistic callbacks if they begin instead to call attention to themselves and get in the way of the story being told, and there were so many. It’s an easy way to get fans on side, sure, but man, ease down on all the fangasms and allow the story to just breathe. I won’t name them all, I’m sure you spotted them and had your own faves and beefs. I prefer a bit of subtlety and nuance in my storytelling, which all the good character work had, but that had to constantly battle against all the “HERE’S A COOL THING” moments. When even the cliffhanger gives you a sense of deja vu and takes you back to the lousy denouement of Nemesis, it does leave you with the wrong kind of a sense of foreboding.

Also really happy to see Raffi back, and that La Sirena is now her ship. She’s the one original character devised for this show who has survived until the third season, and it looks like they’re doing something interesting with her. “You are a Warrior.” Her handler has to be Worf, right? 

Top beef: The Titan-A is one ugly-ass starship. It looks like a kitbashed mashup from one of those old DS9 battle scenes that was intended only ever to pad out background starscape shots. The graceful saucer, truncated at the rear, the stunted neck, all at odds with the blunt angles of the engineering section and overwrought warp and impulse engines. I chuckled when they were aping the STIII: TSFS scenes of her leaving Spacedock, because they were aiming for grace and grandeur and I received the impression of a clumsy teenage Gorn in a ballet dress. And what is all that crap about her being the same ship as Riker’s Titan, but rebuilt from the spaceframe up? Needless, pointless and very unwieldy canon redressing, bending it to fit the story because you wanted to make a joke about Riker’s tastes in music. Clunky beyond belief. Maybe the ship is a duckling with its inner swan yet-to-be-revealed, but that backstory really is ugly.

Nice music, redolent of the epic sweep of the movies, and I did enjoy that... but did we really need Jerry Goldsmith’s First Contact theme to hammer the point home? I love that music, but why is it here? Is it to foreshadow a new Borg encounter?

(Also, Planet M’talas. I know, I know, it’s there in canon, from Enterprise. But, really? It is a little rich to stick it upfront in the first episode, no? We know you’re a fan too, Terry, we know because you signal it at every possible opportunity.)

Overall, a cautious thumbs-up for this prologue. I can see Matalas reaching for the stick-shift to ram us into a higher gear with each following episode, but it’s a good, sturdy set-up. He writes excellent character dialogue and scenes, and with the emphasis on character so far, I hope he steers the right side of all his fan instincts and indulgences regarding the callbacks and set-pieces and does right by the story. Hey, we’re all fans. We don’t need signposts. The legacy takes care of itself.

Absolutely. One scene specifically in GEN jumps out to me and that's when Picard is in his office with Troi doing the emotional thing about the loss of his family. It was 'room lighting'; natural light coming from the nearby star. It contrasted well with the usual brightness of the bridge and other parts of the ship. 

And then the lighting changed with the explosion of the star. I know this is not the stuff that you're supposed to focus on while watching such a scene but the lighting did take me out...and not in a bad way either. 

The lighting from the star exploding took me out of the moment like it did the characters. Like I was with them. Also, the Lighting on the Enterprise-D bridge was INCREDIBLE!!! As was Picard's ready room scene when Riker was briefing Picard about the dead Romulan on the station. I really liked the larger better lit Fish tank. 

In my case it does the opposite. It feels like a cheap way to catch a fan's attention instead of concentrating on the dialog, plot, etc...In other words, I feel that if it relies on the callbacks then other more essential components of the narrative are missing and these are used to gloss over. 

Same here, really 

Thats why I post here. I only have an account over there to see what Madman1701A does with his meshes. Anything I say over there gets bashed. 

I forgot the mention Trek Central is a youtube channel for any of you that's never heard of it.

Well... I don't think you're alone there. 

It feels like there's just so much lore now that no one has to be original, and maybe fans don't even want that anymore. To paraphrase Picard, maybe 57 years of lore just wears like comfortable old leather and no one wants that's anything outside of that.

Honestly, even given the ways I was dissatisfied with DSC S4, at least it was trying to forge its own history a thousand years from the rest of it. And while it wasn't a rousing success in that, it wasn't a miserable failure either.

Star Trek is the stories, the people, and the word-building. When all you do is go into the past, there's no real world-building anymore.