Just watched the first two episodes of a box-set, and the first thing that strikes you is how variable the quality is - one episode was pure schlock-horror, with the villainous alien dehydrating victims through removal of salt, while the next was a sublime allegory of the Garden of Eden. It's also surprising how youthful the cast appear, of similar age to the reboot's cast, when one is familiar with a rather more grizzled Shatner and Nimoy.
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The original Star Trek TV series
It's better than The Next Generation which took itself far too seriously. -
The original Star Trek TV series
I disagree with both parts of that sentence.Comment
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The original Star Trek TV series
I disagree with your disagreement.Comment
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The original Star Trek TV series
My recollection is that the original Star Trek used a wide variety of writers rather than the established "stable" that has become the standard today.
That practice (which was common for early television dramas like The Twilight Zone and Playhouse 90) would naturally lead to greater variations in style and quality.Comment
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The original Star Trek TV series
The original cast always seemed older to me. Then again, I was only 8 or 9 years old when I started watching it back in '67 or '68. I'm so old now I can't remember.Comment
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The original Star Trek TV series
With the original episodes, I just can't get past the shitness of the special effects and alien costumes and it seems like, despite all of the technology, the denouement is often a poorly staged fist fight.
TNG's special effects are crap by today's standards too, but not as much and I don't think it took itself too seriously. It had plenty of ridiculous shit like the holodeck and Whoopie Goldberg.Comment
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The original Star Trek TV series
Worst job on the Enterprise must have been cleaning the holodeck. After a day's heavy use it must have looked like a plasterer's radio.Comment
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The original Star Trek TV series
Heh!Comment
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The original Star Trek TV series
OH MY GODSComment
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The original Star Trek TV series
If I had access to the holodeck, I would spend as much time as possible setting about a holographic Matt Dawson with a holographic baseball bat.Comment
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The original Star Trek TV series
The only Star Trek I have seen is the original series. I saw them as reruns in the seventies and quite enjoyed them. Watched some of them on VHS 10-15 yrs ago and they were still decent.
I loved Lost in Space as a kid as well. My brother sent me some discs a few years ago and I played them for my son and it was embarrassing just how awful the show was in the 21st century. We suffered through a couple episodes and they will likely never be viewed again.Comment
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The original Star Trek TV series
Original Star Trek was a joy. Rest were nerdy re- hashes.Comment
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The original Star Trek TV series
I once interviewed Patrick Stewart and put to him precisely Rogin's point about the holodeck and the uses to which it might more likely be put, other than going horseriding or re-enacting Sherlock Holmes dramas, as apparently preferred by the crew. I elicited a wry smile from the Captain, but no direct response.Comment
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The original Star Trek TV series
One of my top Voyager episodes (a double I think) was when the holodeck went burko* and you had a full scale war between lizards wearing Nazi uniforms and the Voyager crew as the resistance. Sort of Jurassic Park meets 'Allo 'Allo.
*back story more complex than that but can't be arsed.Comment
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The original Star Trek TV series
I kind of preferred Voyager to The Next Generation. The characters were less annoying.Comment
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The original Star Trek TV series
I certainly got into Voyager, after several years of paying little attention to the latest incarnations of Trek.
Some people objected that the captain was annoying, but since by that time I was working, I found it far more realistic than the captain being everybody's hero.Comment
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The original Star Trek TV series
Kate Mulgrew is wonderful. I saw her on Broadway, in "Equus" a few years ago.Comment
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The original Star Trek TV series
I'm almost completely ignorant of anything beyond the original series.
All I could tell you about TNG is: Patrick Stewart, Data, Whoopi Goldberg, bloke with tidybeard, black fella with weird glasses, Klingon bloke and a woman with a big rack.
Is that a fair summation?Comment
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The original Star Trek TV series
It sums up everything that I know about it...Comment
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The original Star Trek TV series
When I did a radio show in university, there was a mentally challenged kid that came on after us (it was a campus/community access station) and he'd talk about Star Trek for a full half-hour. Each week. All by himself. If there was something to know about it, he knew it. This was '86/'87, so I'm pretty sure he only talked about the original series.Comment
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The original Star Trek TV series
I saw an episode of the original show, it was from the third series. I was startled at how old everyone in the show was. Kirk (38) as abducted by a race of aliens who were er, accelerated to really fast speed so no-one could see them, and kirk was being abducted to be the consort of the sexy alien queen, who was played by Kathie Browne (39) and her assistant jason evers (47). Kirk was rescued by 38 year old mr spock and 49 year old Bones.
I think these people were considered young and vibrant because they weren't 60 years old.Comment
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The original Star Trek TV series
I grew up with the original ST and found all the other telly re-boots either uninteresting or trivial - I couldn't really get into the Next Generation, all told.
But I still find the old series immensely watchable. There's an enthusiastic integrity that Shatner and Co. had that still comes across as lively and compelling, compared to the stiff politeness of Stewart's lot. Yep, that 60's version of the future looks more cloddishly angular and boxy with each rerun and those uniforms look even more simplistically comic-book on every viewing - the women's costumes (not just the crew members) look as if they were designed for guest spots on old '70's variety shows between the comedy sketches.
But, it still has what TNG didn't have. A sense of fun. Even with the hokeyness of it all there's a brio to the way the stories - and it had some right belters - were told, a gleefully rambunctious style where cast and crew trod the fine line between taking it deadly seriously and realising it was all a bit loopy. The Next Generation's episodes were sometimes akin to experiencing something a little too solemn and quiet. A sense that if someone farted, the monumental feeling of magnanimity and honour featured each week would crumble and fall and they'd all go back to Starfleet crying with embarrassment.
Nah, the original for me.Comment
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The original Star Trek TV series
I know I shouldn't laugh but this is the most joyous thing I've ever read on OTF.WOM wrote: When I did a radio show in university, there was a mentally challenged kid that came on after us (it was a campus/community access station) and he'd talk about Star Trek for a full half-hour. Each week. All by himself. If there was something to know about it, he knew it. This was '86/'87, so I'm pretty sure he only talked about the original series.
How brilliant for that kid to have a whole half hour to talk about his beloved favourite TV show with no one to tell him to shut up.Comment
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