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Author Topic: Television  (Read 21347 times)

Kam

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Star treks
« Reply #90 on: October 23, 2020, 07:39:47 PM »

Netflix has the Star Treks. 
I never much cared for the original with Capt. Shatner (The Original Series) "TOS"
or the sequel with Capt. Picard (The Next Generation)  "TNG"
or even Voyager with the female Capt. Janeway "VOY"

But last year I watched all five seasons of Star Trek Enterprise and thought it was pretty good. 
Voyager was a prequel to "TOS" right after Humans discovered the WARP drive engine.
The show features the first Starship Enterprise and it ends with the formulation of "The Federation"
It was gratifying to see a Star Trek prequel and they did it very well.

I just finished watching Star Trek Deep Space Nine. "DS9"  All 7 seasons @ 26 episodes per season!

This show takes place just after "TNG" (picard makes an appearance in the first two episodes) and at the same as "VOY" but Voyagers enterprise is accidentally stranded in a whole other part of the galaxy ... the "Delta" quadrant... and trying to get home to the Alpha quadrant where the other series take place and where Earth is.

DS9 doesn't really feature the Enterprise.  The premise of DS9 is that it's a backwater space station at the far reaches of the Alpha quadrant that no one really cares about except two warring races the Bajorans, and the occupying Cardassians who after 50 years of occupation and oppression are returning the planet Bajor to its native Bajorans.  Captain Benjamin Sisko. .. the first black Star Trek captain... is assigned to the post at DS9 as the Bajorans have requested the Federation to assist them as they try to get back on their feet.  The major twist the show throws us is that a stable wormhole gets discovered shortly after Sisko reaches DS9 changing it from an afterthought of a space station to the springboard to the whole new Gamma quadrant

I didn't really expect to like DS9. In fact all I remembered about it was that there were some strange almost alf-like aliens called the Ferengi who ran a bar on the station and who were obsessed with profits.  I thought i'd watch a few episodes and nothing more.  The first season was kind of campy and the characters seemed one-dimensional.  176 episodes later and I just finished the entire series.  The last season was one of the best last seasons of a series i've watched.  The writers knew it was ending and they did the ending justice.  It wasn't rushed like Game of Thrones but it had the same type of breadth and depth of GoT. 



TL/DR: Star Trek DS9 is my favorite Star Trek and it puts the competing Star Wars universe to shame.
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barton

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Re: Television
« Reply #91 on: October 26, 2020, 10:30:29 AM »

I hadn't heard much about DS9.   Will sample some,  thanks for sharing your impressions.

It does seem funny to call it Star Trek, though,  if it's all taking place in a doughnut that just sits in one spot.   JK.
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oilcan

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Re: Television
« Reply #92 on: October 26, 2020, 01:50:06 PM »

I watched a few DS9, and sort of liked the focus more on social issues (in their little microcosm of society) and gossip.  It didn't rope me in at that time, though, due to other time demands.

I liked the humor in the Voyager eps I saw - they bring back "Q" on several occasions, and the Doctor (AI) is also an amusing and likeable character. 
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Kam

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Re: Television
« Reply #93 on: October 26, 2020, 05:39:48 PM »

I watched a few DS9, and sort of liked the focus more on social issues (in their little microcosm of society) and gossip.  It didn't rope me in at that time, though, due to other time demands.

I liked the humor in the Voyager eps I saw - they bring back "Q" on several occasions, and the Doctor (AI) is also an amusing and likeable character.

There is one "Q" episode in DS9 as well.  Not my favorite "Q" episode but a "Q" episode nonetheless.
It's funny how Capt Picard deals with Q through logical reasoning and Capt Sisko just punches him in the face.
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Kam

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Re: Television
« Reply #94 on: October 26, 2020, 05:42:00 PM »

I hadn't heard much about DS9.   Will sample some,  thanks for sharing your impressions.

It does seem funny to call it Star Trek, though,  if it's all taking place in a doughnut that just sits in one spot.   JK.

It's true.  Exploration (outward) not the central focus -- but there is some of that.  Being the conduit to the Gamma quadrant on the other hand brings a lot of aliens to their doorstep.  First contact is established with a handful of species. 
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josh

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Re: Television
« Reply #95 on: November 10, 2020, 10:08:10 PM »

It would explain sooo much!

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barton

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Re: Television
« Reply #96 on: November 14, 2020, 10:07:39 PM »

I'd recommend skipping Ratched, though it has a worthy ensemble (Sarah Paulson,  Corey Stoll, Cynthia Nixon) -- the plotting is over-the-top macabre and grisly and the characters pretty cartoonish with lots of scenery chewing.   The photography is gorgeous,  but often oversaturated,  as if to amplify every mood and wring out every bit of emotion you bring to it.   The opening theme is,  rather unsubtly,  "Danse Macabre," with a montage that makes sure you get that all things grotesque await you.   More annoying is the device of having 1940s characters use late 20th century profanity,  as if the writers are afraid we just won't get authentic forties cursing.   Worse,  there's just something so preposterous about the whole narrative that it's very hard to take any of the horrific events seriously and be properly appalled.   And finally,  Vince D'Onofrio,  who I'm starting to view as a menace to civilization on a par with melting polar caps, plays the governor of California.   It's 1947.  So that would be Earl Warren.   I don't think so.   
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Kam

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Good read if you have the time
« Reply #97 on: November 20, 2020, 01:15:10 AM »

https://medium.com/maxistentialism-blog/star-trek-deep-space-nine-in-82-5-hours-10acde591fd2

A little bit about Star Trek

Deep Space Nine was born out of the politics of the Next Generation writers’ room, which writer Tracy Tormé described as “an insane asylum.”
Gene Roddenberry, the utopian visionary/despotic lunatic creator of Star Trek, established a set of strict rules about how people would behave in the future. Roddenberry said that in the 24th century, there would be no money because futuristic technology would provide for people’s material needs. There would be no smoking, no piracy, no religion, and no prejudice. After Roddenberry cast Patrick Stewart as the captain in Next Generation, a reporter joked, “Surely they would have cured baldness by the 24th century!” Roddenberry replied, “In the 24th century, they wouldn’t care.”

Roddenberry also decreed that among the enlightened members of the Federation, there would be no interpersonal conflict. He banned “stories in which our characters do something stupid or dangerous.” The Next Generation writers hated these rules, because, to put it lightly, conflict and danger are traditionally considered important components of a good story.

Next Generation writer Ronald D. Moore (who would go on to write for DS9 and create Battlestar Galactica) said, “It was a constant problem that we just sort of gnashed our teeth about. It never made any logical sense or any dramatic sense. And we were always bitching and moaning about it. And my personal theory was that Gene sort of started to believe in himself as more of a visionary than a writer at a certain point. He started to believe the stuff that he was creating a utopian future and wanted the Next Generation universe to be reflective of the utopian universe that so many people had told him he had been creating for all these years.”

Here’s an anecdote that I love, from Next Gen writer (and future DS9 showrunner) Ira Steven Behr:
I created this planet called Risa, which was a pleasure planet. The captain was stressed out and needed a vacation. He went on this vacation and there was a holosuite there — or a holodeck — I guess a holosuite, we called it.

It said, “Face Your Greatest Fear!” and it was like a carnival place. And he thought, “Oh, cool, this is going to put me in a good mood. What I need is to fight some Klingons without thinking about the repercussions of it, or go after some Romulans or whatever it is.
And he goes into this holodeck, and it was all about the captain being promoted to admiral, and losing the Enterprise, and Riker being bumped up to captain of the Enterprise. Basically, though we never really hit it on the head, it’s about growing old. Not to grow old, but your time of life changing and suddenly you’re not going to be the guy going off on adventures, you’re going to be sitting at a desk somewhere, SENDING people on adventures. That’s his greatest fear.

Then it became a whole long story that I’m not going to get into now, but it got SLAMMED dead by Gene [Roddenberry]; it was my big ‘Gene meeting’, where he slammed me down with all kind of pronouncements about what Star Trek is and is not. It was like, “Picard fears nothing. If it’s time for him to grow old, to become an admiral, he becomes an admiral! He would not think about that, AT ALL. Picard is John Wayne!” Well, John Wayne had all kinds of fears and guilt and angers and bitterness in his best movies… “No. John Wayne is a hero, Picard is a hero, we are not doing this episode.” Even though I guess this had happened a lot on the show in the first couple seasons, it hadn’t hit us.
And that’s when Gene sat there, “…but I love the pleasure planet! Get the captain laid!”
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Kam

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After Roddenberry passed away
« Reply #98 on: November 20, 2020, 01:17:14 AM »

After Roddenberry passed away, NBC president Brandon Tartikoff asked Next Gen executive producer Rick Berman and showrunner Michael Piller to make a new Star Trek series — the first without Gene Roddenberry. Tartikoff said he wanted this new show to have a classic western format: a man and his son arrive at a frontier town on the edge of known civilization.

Rick Berman started to work on the new show ( Deep Space Nine ) by grappling with what he called “Roddenberry’s Box.” Berman:

The problem with Star Trek: The Next Generation is Gene created a group of characters that he purposely chose not to allow conflict between. Starfleet officers cannot be in conflict, thus it's murderous to write these shows because there is no good drama without conflict, and the conflict has to come from outside the group.

What we wanted to do was something that was almost paradoxical — bring conflict but not break Gene’s rules. They still play paramount importance in what we’re doing. We created an environment where Starfleet officers were in a location that they weren’t happy about being in, and they were in a location where the people who lived there weren’t all that happy about them being there. We also created a situation where we had people who were members of our core group who were not Starfleet. So we have a lot of frustration and conflict.




DS9 is essentially a Western with an ensemble cast. Writer Robert Hewitt Wolfe said, “We had the country doctor, and we had the barkeeper, and we had the sheriff and we had the mayor, we had it all, it was all there. We had the common man, Miles O’Brien, the Native American, Kira.”

As the show begins, the militaristic Cardassians have recently ended a brutal 50-year occupation of the ancient, peaceful Bajorans. Bajor has petitioned to join the Federation (a kind of futuristic U.N. devoted to peaceful exploration) and our heroes head to a space station outside of Bajor (formerly a Cardassian military outpost) to oversee that process.

Most of the action takes place on the station, which is a remote outpost at the edge of Federation space. This naturally lent itself to a sense of continuity —

Ronald D. Moore said:
“The nature of the show itself was that it is a space station that doesn’t go anywhere so the storylines tended to stick around. The Enterprise could pull up to a planet and have an episode and keep going. With Deep Space Nine, anything that took place on the station, well guess what? Next week you are still on the station. And Bajor is not going anywhere. So really you had to keep playing those stories. You couldn’t make a big change in Bajor’s political structure in one week and then ignore it then next. You had to keep it going.”




What you should know going in

Deep Space Nine is a political show, and the politics are complicated. The show will ask you to care about many different political systems interacting with one another — it’s not confusing, but if you pay attention, it’s really fun to see how the Klingon, Bajoran, Cardassian, and Ferengi political situations change over time.
« Last Edit: November 20, 2020, 01:25:08 AM by Kam »
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Kam

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Re: Television
« Reply #99 on: November 20, 2020, 03:41:19 AM »

I'd recommend skipping Ratched,  

The actress who played the ORIGINAL nurse Ratched is one of the major antagonists in Deep Space Nine!
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josh

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Re: Television
« Reply #100 on: November 21, 2020, 11:49:40 AM »

The notion of a Picard without the Enterprise and having a listless life lies at the heart of the Picard series, along with how he ended up in that situation.

We get variations on the pleasure planet theme, in particular the movie Generations.
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Oilcan

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Oilcan

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Re: Television
« Reply #102 on: February 13, 2021, 12:49:37 PM »

Bit of a delay on Better Call Saul getting to Netflix.  Was going to be NOW,  but season five doesn't release until right before season six premieres on AMC,  and S6 is delayed owing to some covid slowdowns.   Maybe March.   

I am jonesing.   And understanding how these delays pump Blu-ray sales.

(this post prompted by mention of Saul in the Biden forum)
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barton

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Re: Crapa Pelada - the song that Gale sings in Break Bad
« Reply #103 on: March 06, 2021, 11:28:12 AM »

How about this,  which David Costabile sings along with as his,  er, lab career is about to abruptly end in the season three finale of Breaking Bad...

https://youtu.be/qckWhsw-RZM

Been rewatching the series this winter,  noticing gleams of brillance I missed the first time through,  and generally deepening my sense of what Vince Gilligan has to say about the pure products of America.   

"Saul" fans may recall that Costabile ("Gale") also pops up in that series,  singing along with "The Elements" as he works in his lab.   If you haven't caught the Tom Lehrer song,  you've missed something. 
« Last Edit: March 06, 2021, 11:32:46 AM by barton »
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Oilcan

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Re: Television
« Reply #104 on: March 07, 2021, 11:22:30 AM »

One of the best curtain drops in BB was when Hank notices that Gale,  a vegan,  has a Pollos Hermanos carryout sack on his table.   

Hope to see more of Costabile in BCS as the timeline of the prequel series advances towards the BB timeline.   

BCS can't run too much longer without weird reverse aging issues.   Mike, Jimmy,  Gus,  all getting noticeably older than they were in the original BB series, at a chronological point where they should be younger.
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