It’s an outright rejection of actual human nature, though ... which makes it incapable of saying anything true or worthwhile. The entire franchise has this problem to some degree, but it ignores the implications of its central premises just often enough to work. Roddenberry’s worldview, though, was (and is) inherently…
Ladybug2
ladybug2
They’re sort of similar, though the bugs assimilate in secret while the Borg just DGAF.
I had no idea. He probably would’ve been a good Riker.
What part of the humanist agenda was Troi having 3 (or more) breasts?
I always preferred Pulaski to Crusher because I liked the Pulaski / Worf friendship and her hobby/knowledge of Klingon stuff, while Crusher was just there to stand around and talk about hypo-sprays.
Aiming for Harrison Ford, winding up with Gil Gerard.
ooh, can we talk about Pulaski? What a sad mis-step that was. They thought they could re-create the Spock-Bones rivalry by introducing a quasi-racist grumpy old doctor to throw shade at Data. Unfortunately, it absolutely did not work, because of fundamental differences between Spock and Data. Spock was confident and…
1. I love TNG (and TOS). But the people who hate Disco seem to think that TNG was all “The Best of Both Worlds” and “Measure of a Man”, when it was really at least 50% “Up The Long Ladder” and “Sub Rosa”. Kill your nostalgia.
UGH this episode sucks on ice all the way through. Okona is about as “outrageous” as a scoop of vanilla ice cream, yet every member of the crew has a huge boner for his supposed rascally charm (apparently taking place entirely off screen, because on it he comes off as a boring clowny douche).
Roddenberry died in late 1991, by which point the show was in its fourth season and he hadn’t been heavily involved with its direction for over a year.
Something that likely helped the show survive until it could get good is that it was produced for syndication in its first run. There was no network that could actually cancel it, at least not in a way that would end production. And with the Trek name attached and still being in an era where lots of people didn’t have…
And going into the back end, there’s the Season 5 episode The Outcast, about “one woman’s brave quest for cock in the face of lesbian tyranny,” as Cracked excellently put it. Though apparently Jonathan Frakes campaigned long and hard to have his love interest there be played by a man (in the early ‘90s, mind you) so…
It wasn’t. My recollection after all these years is that it was one of those scripts where an “outrageous” character is played up as whimsical and hilarious while actually being pretty irritating and obnoxious.
It wasn’t. It focused so much on the knock-off Han Solo (a very young Billy Campbell, so spot on for casting I guess) that I was fairly sure it was a backdoor pilot. I haven’t been able to find any evidence of that, but I still think some writer wanted it bad.
It’s also worth mentioning the constant conflict presented by Gene Rodenberry advocating to push his Humanist agenda on the narrative every week.
Keep in mind, TNG was produced from 1987 to 1994. That was a much different television landscape than present day, including the fact that TNG was a syndicated series, not a network series. At that point, all that TNG had was the original series and four films. It also didn’t help that there was a writers strike that…
Thadiun Okona, the only man capable of out-Rikering Riker with the ladies.
It also tries to give TNG its own Harry Mudd, by introducing a sexy young pirate. Really, really, really missing the point, guys!
I think the TNG episode that caused me to cringe the worst was “The Outrageous Okona, ” solely for its “Data tries to learn comedy from Joe Piscopo” subplot. The rest of the episode might have been fantastic, for all I know, but that subplot just flat-out traumatized me, and I don’t remember the rest of the episode at…