Story, Wednesday September 21, 2016

[Vorlonagent 442]

1 minute ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

The hologram would probably give better relationship advice than I would.

Besides, all or some of us may be simulations of beings rather than the "intelligent" life forms we think we are.

Only because that hologram had its lines written for it by people who had a god's eye view of the relationships in question.  If you had that perspective, you'd give great advice too.

The only time The Franchise's flirtation with "holograms are alive" was anything besides massively annoying to me was Voyager's Emergency Medical Hologram character, and he was the only good thing about Voyager... 

[Vorlonagent 442]

2 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Hmmm ... it's true 2x23 wasn't that explicit about it as 4x06 and 7x12 ...

I don't get it.  Your turn to break out the exposition charts. 

[hkmaly 490]

5 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

8 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Hmmm ... it's true 2x23 wasn't that explicit about it as 4x06 and 7x12 ...

I don't get it.  Your turn to break out the exposition charts. 

Charts? I think this is best explained with images:

4x06 Rejoined:

7x12 The Emperor’s New Cloak:

(Note: the joke is reducing the "groundbreakingness" to this single issue ... but on the other hand, there is single kiss the "groundbreakingness" of TOS is often reduced to ...)

[Scotty 1,061]

4 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

The only time The Franchise's flirtation with "holograms are alive" was anything besides massively annoying to me was Voyager's Emergency Medical Hologram character, and he was the only good thing about Voyager... 

And that was just a rehash of the "Is Data a sentient being?" story.

[Vorlonagent 442]

1 minute ago, hkmaly said:

Charts? I think this is best explained with images:

4x06 Rejoined:

That's actually news to me.  Hmm...

[hkmaly 490]

(Note: The thread was just marked "hot". While the software claims it was due to high number of recent post, it's funny that it happened just after posting those photos ...)

[Vorlonagent 442]

1 minute ago, Scotty said:

And that was just a rehash of the "Is Data a sentient being?" story.

Data never bothered me because he was always phrased as "Pinoccio trying to become a Real Boy", (which you can argue is a rehash of Spock and His Relationship to His Emotions).

Holograms always struck me as narrow-use things and having them spontaneously transcend their limits never sat well with me.  Voyager's EMH is the one exception.  He kinda had to evolve in order to do his job.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

42 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

Generally agreed.  Competition tends to force one to step up their game and Babylon 5 reached its prime about the same time as DS9 hit Season 3 or 4.  I'd argue DS9s first few seasons didn't push the envelope much past Sisco punching Q.

The Dominion War was good stuff with a few caveats.  I could have done without Jake Sisco: Ace War Reporter and the degree to which characters went to a hologram for relationship advice...

I agree with both of you. To me DS9 reached its heights with the episode "In the Pale Moonlight" in which Sisko out of desperation takes just one little step into the unethical. And very soon the consequences are snowballing out of control...

Jake Sisko was sometimes good but my Lord he was annoying as the war reporter. I wanted so badly to smack him.

[Scotty 1,061]

1 minute ago, Vorlonagent said:

Data never bothered me because he was always phrased as "Pinoccio trying to become a Real Boy", (which you can argue is a rehash of Spock and His Relationship to His Emotions).

Holograms always struck me as narrow-use things and having them spontaneously transcend their limits never sat well with me.  Voyager's EMH is the one exception.  He kinda had to evolve in order to do his job.

The main thing about the Data story was the episode where a guy from starfleet R&D wanted to take him back and disassemble him for study in the hopes to reproduce Soong's work and make more androids, this called into question Data's rights as a sentient being and was then determined he did fit the definition of one, later on those rights would be tested again when Data attempted to create his own offspring and R&D wanted to take her away for study.

The Doctor's case wasn't quite as groundbreaking but the idea was the same, we have an artificial intelligence that gained a fair amount of autonomy (especially once he aquired the 29th century tech based mobile emitter) and had become almost indistinguishable from the rest of the crew and yet there were moments where there was a question of if he or any like him should be treated as anything more than just a artificial intelligence.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

1 minute ago, Scotty said:

The main thing about the Data story was the episode where a guy from starfleet R&D wanted to take him back and disassemble him for study in the hopes to reproduce Soong's work and make more androids, this called into question Data's rights as a sentient being

That was perhaps the first time TNG achieved truly groundbreaking science fiction. 'Measure of a Man' was brilliant and chilling, culminating in Whoopi Goldberg's awesome revelation of exactly how high the stakes were.

[hkmaly 490]

15 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

I agree with both of you. To me DS9 reached its heights with the episode "In the Pale Moonlight" in which Sisko out of desperation takes just one little step into the unethical. And very soon the consequences are snowballing out of control...

But it WAS necessary. Which is why it's so important - very often, this "hero will do something unethical but necessary" is avoided in movies, with either the hero finding another solution or with showing it WASN'T necessary and the hero was bad to do it.

13 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

16 minutes ago, Scotty said:

The main thing about the Data story was the episode where a guy from starfleet R&D wanted to take him back and disassemble him for study in the hopes to reproduce Soong's work and make more androids, this called into question Data's rights as a sentient being

That was perhaps the first time TNG achieved truly groundbreaking science fiction. 'Measure of a Man' was brilliant and chilling, culminating in Whoopi Goldberg's awesome revelation of exactly how high the stakes were.

... and yet it's episode of second season, disproving the simple division mentioned earlier ...

[The Old Hack 2,448]

1 minute ago, hkmaly said:

But it WAS necessary. Which is why it's so important - very often, this "hero will do something unethical but necessary" is avoided in movies, with either the hero finding another solution or with showing it WASN'T necessary and the hero was bad to do it.

... and yet it's episode of second season, disproving the simple division mentioned earlier ...

Oh yes. Some consider it breaking with Gene Roddenberry's ideal. I personally believe that a flawed ideal is better than either no ideal at all or a completely perfect one. The flawed ideal forces you to think about it and to fight for it; in the case of no ideal at all there is nothing worth fighting for and in the case of the perfect ideal there is no need for either thinking or fighting. And that would promote a passivity and absence of creativity and ambition that I find frightening to contemplate.

As to the second season thing, rules of thumb are often flawed. Most of season two was bland at best and a huge loss of potential at worst. There may have been a good episode in season one but I cannot remember any offhand.

[Scotty 1,061]

49 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

As to the second season thing, rules of thumb are often flawed. Most of season two was bland at best and a huge loss of potential at worst. There may have been a good episode in season one but I cannot remember any offhand.

As flawed as Season 2 was, it did lay the groundwork for the rest of the series. Season 1 attempted to portray humanity and the universe in general as more peaceful and perfect compared to the setting in TOS, but that didn't work out very well so Season 2 saw characters having flaws, struggling with questions of honor and loyalty, and even introduced the Borg.

[CritterKeeper 1,102]

2 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

As to the second season thing, rules of thumb are often flawed. Most of season two was bland at best and a huge loss of potential at worst. There may have been a good episode in season one but I cannot remember any offhand.

You're making me realize just how long ago I watched TNG.  I think most episodes, I haven't seen since they aired, although there have been a few favorites I nearly wore out the tape on.  (Yes, tape.  We taped it, and I watched the tapes.  DVDs first weren't around and then were expensive.)  I may have to re-watch the series, although I think I need to watch the huge chunk of David Tennant's Doctor that I haven't seen yet first....

[malloyd 23]

12 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

As to the second season thing, rules of thumb are often flawed. Most of season two was bland at best and a huge loss of potential at worst. There may have been a good episode in season one but I cannot remember any offhand.

Fan ratings usually put Datalore or Arsenal of Freedom at the top of season one.  They're OK, but I wouldn't say great.

There's a LOT of wasted potential in NextGen, they had some genuinely talented actors, what with Stewart, Spiner and Burton in the main cast, and most of the rest of the cast and guests are at least competent.  Too bad they didn't get better scripts.  And of course if you have good actors, you naturally want to cast them as an emotionless robot and a character with a prop obscuring his face.  It's amazing someone didn't decide Picard had voice damage and make Stewart deliver his lines through a voder.  Maybe the prop budget didn't stretch.

 

[CritterKeeper 1,102]

1 hour ago, malloyd said:

There's a LOT of wasted potential in NextGen, they had some genuinely talented actors, what with Stewart, Spiner and Burton in the main cast, and most of the rest of the cast and guests are at least competent.  Too bad they didn't get better scripts. 

Well, there was a big writers' strike early in the series, so they kinda had to go with what they had at the time.  If you have six Wesley-saves-the-day scripts sitting on your desk, normally you'd pick the best one, maybe two, and put them at most at opposite ends of a season, if not in completely different seasons.  If you've got nothing else to use and you have a show to put on, then you have to use more of them and closer together than is ideal.  A lot of other shows had the same problems.

1 hour ago, malloyd said:

And of course if you have good actors, you naturally want to cast them as an emotionless robot and a character with a prop obscuring his face.

Ah, but those are exactly the roles you need the best actors for, because it's such a challenge to convey what you need to while handicapped.  (I use the term here like it's used in chess or golf, where a stronger player might give up a few pieces from the beginning in order to make it a more fair game for the weaker opponent and more of a challenge, and thus more interesting, for the stronger player.)  To be able to deliver a nuanced enough performance to make it believable that Data is only just starting to develop and explore friendship and loyalty and fear; to be able to show love and concern and distrust without showing it through the eyes; even to express emotions when their forehead is a prosthetic and they can't wrinkle their brow; those are the times you really appreciate how good an actor is!

[The Old Hack 2,448]

56 minutes ago, CritterKeeper said:

Well, there was a big writers' strike early in the series, so they kinda had to go with what they had at the time.

Amongst other things this resulted in the truly horrendous episode 'Shades of Gray.' I cringe just remembering it.

[ijuin 572]

17 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:

Classic Trek was very much a creature of its times.  It doesn't stand well to 2016 standards.  But compared to other shows of its day (any Lost in Space episode filmed in color for example), it was both groundbreaking and stone-cold serious. 

TOS also suffered from an extremely low budget, even by the standards of 1960s network shows. The sets looked like cardboard and plywood because they were.

[CritterKeeper 1,102]

Hmm, y'know, after looking at the episode list on Wiki a bit, I may have to revise my opinion of Season 2 and of the effect of the writers' strike.  Melinda Snodgrass wrote the script for "The Measure of a Man" on spec, and it was accepted due to the strike.  Perhaps my favorite episode, "Q Who," was in the second season, and it's absolutely fantastic!

As for "Shades of Grey," what I just read says that they spent an extra $50,000 on "Q Who" and also went overbudget on "Elementary, My Dear Data," and that's what left them needing to save money by doing a clip show.  If I were asked whether it would be better to skimp on those two, or do a clip show to make up for them, I know what I'd say!

The more I learn about TV production, the more I've come to appreciate just how difficult it can be to craft a good bottle episode. That's an episode which is filmed with minimal cast, sets, effects, etc. to save money.  Some of the finest pieces of drama are bottle episodes, because when you take away all the shooting and running and guest stars and new sets, what you get is the main characters everyone knows and cares about, talking to each other and hopefully revealing new depths.  Unfortunately, if it's done wrong, then it comes across as cheap, boring, or both.  Or, of course, it ends up expanding until it's no longer the money-saver it was meant to be,

[Vorlonagent 442]

17 hours ago, Scotty said:

The main thing about the Data story was the episode where a guy from starfleet R&D wanted to take him back and disassemble him for study in the hopes to reproduce Soong's work and make more androids, this called into question Data's rights as a sentient being and was then determined he did fit the definition of one, later on those rights would be tested again when Data attempted to create his own offspring and R&D wanted to take her away for study.

...which itself was a hasty retcon.  If you watch Encounter at Farpoint again, Data was phrased as the standard "ship's android" all starfleet vessels had.

16 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

Oh yes. Some consider it breaking with Gene Roddenberry's ideal. I personally believe that a flawed ideal is better than either no ideal at all or a completely perfect one. The flawed ideal forces you to think about it and to fight for it; in the case of no ideal at all there is nothing worth fighting for and in the case of the perfect ideal there is no need for either thinking or fighting. And that would promote a passivity and absence of creativity and ambition that I find frightening to contemplate.

Roddenberry's ideals were not all they were cracked up to be.  Heresy, I know.   

His 24th Century was sanctimoniously bland.  The self-actualized paragons that Roddenberry wanted the cast (or at least Picard) to be would destroy 90% of character conflicts if continued and character is why we tune in.  Roddenberry's ideals had to be left in the dust for the Franchise to fly at all.  All the greater sin to lay at Rick Berman's door.

2 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

Well, there was a big writers' strike early in the series, so they kinda had to go with what they had at the time.  If you have six Wesley-saves-the-day scripts sitting on your desk, normally you'd pick the best one, maybe two, and put them at most at opposite ends of a season, if not in completely different seasons.  If you've got nothing else to use and you have a show to put on, then you have to use more of them and closer together than is ideal.  A lot of other shows had the same problems.

They didn't have 6 Wesley-saves-the-day scripts.  They had 6 scripts that were rewritten to become Wesley-saves-the-day scripts by Roddenberry.  Wil Wheaton took a lot of fan hate for it too, up to and including death threats aimed and him and his family (who needs the internet, right?).  He reportedly threatened to quit if Roddenberry didn't stop.  Wesley Crusher was Roddenberry's Marty Stu.

2 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

Ah, but those are exactly the roles you need the best actors for, because it's such a challenge to convey what you need to while handicapped.  (I use the term here like it's used in chess or golf, where a stronger player might give up a few pieces from the beginning in order to make it a more fair game for the weaker opponent and more of a challenge, and thus more interesting, for the stronger player.)  To be able to deliver a nuanced enough performance to make it believable that Data is only just starting to develop and explore friendship and loyalty and fear; to be able to show love and concern and distrust without showing it through the eyes; even to express emotions when their forehead is a prosthetic and they can't wrinkle their brow; those are the times you really appreciate how good an actor is!

I was never impressed with Jonathan Frakes until I saw him play Thomas Riker.  I didn't realize how much of his acting ability was a prisoner of the character he played.

[Scotty 1,061]

Just now, Vorlonagent said:

I was never impressed with Jonathan Frakes until I saw him play Thomas Riker.  I didn't realize how much of his acting ability was a prisoner of the character he played.

That was the same with Brent Spiner and his Data vs Lore stuff, he was able to go to 2 different extremes seamlessly, heck the 4th season episode "Brothers" had Brent playing Data, Lore, and Dr Soong, I'd love to see a blooper reel of the times Brent would have spoken the wrong lines for the wrong character.

[CritterKeeper 1,102]

37 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

I was never impressed with Jonathan Frakes until I saw him play Thomas Riker.  I didn't realize how much of his acting ability was a prisoner of the character he played.

 

21 minutes ago, Scotty said:

That was the same with Brent Spiner and his Data vs Lore stuff, he was able to go to 2 different extremes seamlessly, heck the 4th season episode "Brothers" had Brent playing Data, Lore, and Dr Soong

Some of my favorite episodes are when characters switch bodies, and you get to see the actors immitate each other!  That, or a dead character takes over the body of a current one,  The Invisible Man had an episode where Darien switched back and forth between himself and his brother who was killed in the pilot. Vincent Ventresca did a wonderful job with different body language mannerisms, etc.

[Vorlonagent 442]

10 minutes ago, CritterKeeper said:

Some of my favorite episodes are when characters switch bodies, and you get to see the actors immitate each other!  That, or a dead character takes over the body of a current one,  The Invisible Man had an episode where Darien switched back and forth between himself and his brother who was killed in the pilot. Vincent Ventresca did a wonderful job with different body language mannerisms, etc.

Farscape has a really good body-swap episode...

[Scotty 1,061]

Just now, CritterKeeper said:

Some of my favorite episodes are when characters switch bodies, and you get to see the actors immitate each other!  That, or a dead character takes over the body of a current one,  The Invisible Man had an episode where Darien switched back and forth between himself and his brother who was killed in the pilot. Vincent Ventresca did a wonderful job with different body language mannerisms, etc.

On that note, I was not a fan of the "Power Play" episode of TNG. Brent was the only one that really sold the idea that he was possessed, Marina and Colm seemed more like androids than Data normally is.

[hkmaly 490]

6 hours ago, ijuin said:

23 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:

Classic Trek was very much a creature of its times.  It doesn't stand well to 2016 standards.  But compared to other shows of its day (any Lost in Space episode filmed in color for example), it was both groundbreaking and stone-cold serious. 

TOS also suffered from an extremely low budget, even by the standards of 1960s network shows. The sets looked like cardboard and plywood because they were.

5 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

As for "Shades of Grey," what I just read says that they spent an extra $50,000 on "Q Who" and also went overbudget on "Elementary, My Dear Data," and that's what left them needing to save money by doing a clip show.  If I were asked whether it would be better to skimp on those two, or do a clip show to make up for them, I know what I'd say!

Surprisingly, now, when digital effects are much cheaper than they used to be, the quality of shows didn't really got up. Apparently, money are not the ONLY problem.