50 Favorites: Star Trek Big Five

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50 Favorites: Star Trek Big Five

Postby Friday » Tue Jan 19, 2021 9:34 pm

Hello. I am Friday and I love Star Trek. How much do I love Star Trek? Let's find out:

1. Memes
2. When you headshot a Tracer with Mei's right click
3. Riker
4. Trash Anime
5. Lists and Polls
6. Star Trek
7. Empire Strikes Back
8. That scene in A New Hope when Obi Won rolls his eyes at Han
9. basically any post Norondor ever made
10. being mean to Romo

ok so that's pretty high up there!

So here's the deal. I'm gonna keep this to the "big five" of Trek shows. TOS, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise. I'm also excluding the movies. I originally wanted to just do a top five, but I quickly realized there were just too many good TNG episodes. So in fairness, I also expanded the list for the rest. This wasn't too hard with TOS and DS9, but man, ENT and VOY. But I managed it. Anyway, I'm leaving out the rest because I haven't seen them.

So we'll be starting at the bottom and rotating through. Which means you'll first get number ten from each show, then we'll move up to nine, etc. It's only half as many posts as my top 100 videogame project that I still haven't quite finished!

As always, these are my personal favorites. I've got some weird picks in here, as well as a lot of fairly predictable ones. And some picks that are super popular in general won't be appearing, because I've got to make room for my weird picks somehow.

As always, feel free to comment, subscribe, ring that bell, and call me a stupid pleb with awful taste and that clearly Star Wars is superior.

Let's get going! Oh, and, it's basically impossible to talk about the themes and shit of these episodes without spoiling them, so, Spoiler Warning. I'll try to keep it to a minimum, though.
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Re: 50 Favorites: Star Trek Big Five

Postby Friday » Tue Jan 19, 2021 9:48 pm



ENT:
10. Observer Effect

A pair of Organians (the same race from TOS that forces the first Klingon-Federation cease fire) shows up on Enterprise to observe what the humans will do when they're exposed to an incurable disease on a nearby planet. They hop from body to body on their "observe only, no interference" mission, judging the actions of Captain Archer and everyone else. Just like everyone's favorite Q, they consider themselves so evolved and other races so primitive that they've basically lost all empathy for them.

Luckily, our intrepid crew convinces them otherwise. This is actually implied to change how their whole race interacts with primitive beings, that's just how cool humans are.

Mostly, though, I like this episode because it shows how the characters we've come to know act when faced by an undefeatable enemy that is slowly killing everyone. There are some real decent character moments here between best character Phlox and the dying crew as he refuses to give up on helping them.

Eh, it's the worst episode of one of the two worst shows that's gonna be on this list. You can do a lot worse (even in TNG) but it's not going to blow your socks off. I had to scrape pretty low in the barrel to come up with 10 ENT and VOY eps.
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Re: 50 Favorites: Star Trek Big Five

Postby Friday » Tue Jan 19, 2021 10:08 pm

VOY:
10. Dark Frontier

Voyager is infamous for "ruining the Borg by overusing them" which is sort of true. The Borg aren't overused as much as misused. Like anything that is both mysterious and popular, the more you explore the concept and remove the mystery, the less cool the concept becomes. The Force was cooler before midichlorians, and The Borg were cooler before Voyager. Voyager specifically made the Borg less horrific by having Janeway constantly outsmart and escape them.

That being said, Dark Frontier actually manages to restore a bit of the Borg's horror by showing them assimilating a world from their own perspective. The Queen forces Seven to help the Borg adapt to the alien's weapons as she watches Cubes explode, killing untold drones. When she finally does so, she's rewarded by watching 300,000 people get assimilated. She even begs The Queen to let a small shuttle go, and the Queen complies with a smirk.

This episode also delves more into Seven's past, showing her parents aboard The Raven studying the Borg. This culminates in The Queen showing Seven a dark and fairly predictable surprise, all in the attempt to get Seven to rejoin the collective of her own will. (For some reason.)

The Queen in this episode is played by a different actress (Susanna Thompson), and honestly I prefer her to Alice Krige. Krige always played it so smug and superior, but Thompson plays the Queen with a cold, calculating and relentless demeanor. Like the collective itself, she's going to win and you're just an ant delaying the inevitable. But of course then Janeway shows up and uses some bullshit to actually fly into Borg infested space to rescue Seven and get away clean, which is probably the most suicide mission of all suicide missions, fucking ever. Good thing Janeway has plot armor thicker than God.

Still, the episode succeeded in offering a glimpse back into the glory days of the Borg, and for that it belongs on this list.
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Re: 50 Favorites: Star Trek Big Five

Postby Friday » Tue Jan 19, 2021 10:20 pm



DS9:
10. The Wire

Welcome to Deep Space Nine. We hope you enjoy your Cardassian Nazis.

Deep Space Nine is what happens when you do grit right. As Brentai recently commented, it's about maintaining optimism and the Star Trek coda in the face of dark times and events. It's not about lasers and people getting fucking killed with knives and doing kickflips.

Garak is my favorite non-Riker Star Trek character. Without spoiling his character too much for those who might be reading this who haven't seen DS9, he is a amicable polite tailor with a dark past in the Cardassian intelligence game.

In this episode, an implant in his head (originally put there to keep him in line) starts to malfunction and kill Garak, causing him incredible pain. His friend (and aborted gay romantic interest, thanks Berman), Doctor Bashir has to rush to figure out a way to save him. It's not easy and leads Bashir to some shady characters. It culminates in the above scene, where Garak, in his pain and madness, confesses all. Or does he?

"Of all the stories you told me, which ones were true and which ones weren't?" asks Bashir at the episode's end.

"My dear Doctor, they're all true," replies Garak with a smile.

"Even the lies?"

"Especially the lies."

This episode cemented Garak as a true wildcard (and show favorite), a man who lies like he breathes. But as we see as the series progresses, some of what gets said in this episode was actually true, filtered through a certain lens of self-regret and misery.

There's a lot of Cardassian Nazi stuff in DS9, and a lot of it is really, really good. This episode is just the tip of the iceberg, but Garak's (Andrew Robinson) performance here is too good to not include. It sets up a lot of stuff to come, as well.
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Re: 50 Favorites: Star Trek Big Five

Postby Friday » Tue Jan 19, 2021 10:33 pm



TNG:
10. All Good Things

We begin with the end. The series finale of TNG is an amazing capper on the show, serving as a glimpse into both the past and future of Star Trek. Everyone's favorite mischievous entity, Q, shows up to deliver some of his best taunts and cryptic helpful advice. Picard finds himself travelling back and forth between the present, the past (the first season of the show) and the future (Picard as an old man living on earth) for unknown reasons. He quickly realizes something is wrong when a spatial anomaly is reported in the same location in both the past and present. (An anomaly that had not been there the first time around.) As Picard unravels the mystery in all three timelines, we get to see such delightful things as:

1. Data with a skunkstripe in his hair
2. His giant pile of cats, a few of which are actually holographic decoration (no really watch the scene with them closely)
3. Worf and Riker being mad at each other over Troi
4. Tasha Yar is back! It's season 1 again, baby!
5. Season 1 Data is back, and annoying as ever!
6. Q plays 20 questions with Picard and Picard rolls his eyes at Q
7. Future Enterprise has three Nacelles and blows up a Klingon ship! Fuckin' sick

TNG ended perfectly. A continuation of the Pilot's premise, Picard's journey of discovery. And finally, Picard drops his guard and joins his crew to play Poker for the first time. 10 out of 10.

Then they made Star Trek Generations and ruined everything. Oh well.

But seriously, All Good Things might be the best series finale I've ever seen. Of course, being that it's a culmination of everything before it, you can't exactly watch it before watching the rest of TNG. But if you're a Trek fan and haven't seen TNG, something is pretty wrong with you.
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Re: 50 Favorites: Star Trek Big Five

Postby Friday » Tue Jan 19, 2021 10:42 pm



TOS:
10. Amok Time

Spock goes into heat and must fuck or kill.

Kirk gets involved because he's cocky and wants to show up the Vulcans.

The origin of Pon Farr, this episode is mostly silly fun but has some real bite at the end when Spock is convinced he has killed his best friend. Nemoy's performance in TOS is absolutely sublime throughout. When he discovers Kirk is alive at the end of the episode, he breaks into a huge smile as he embraces his friend. Bones and Kirk of course immediately make fun of him for showing emotion while Spock denies it entirely.

The strange thing about watching TOS now is that while it's silly and hokey, it's also still unironically enjoyable. I can sit down and watch a TOS episode and laugh and have a good time and maybe even think about a theme or a lesson. I'm not angry the whole time because people are doing Matrix shit and getting blown into space. I hate the future, it sucks.

Anyway, Amok Time is a famous episode for a reason. Apart from the AMAZING MUSIC and the INTENSE WIDE SHOT STUNTMEN FIGHTING, it actually contains some decent acting and good character moments.
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Re: 50 Favorites: Star Trek Big Five

Postby Mothra » Wed Jan 20, 2021 6:03 pm

Yeah, everyone loves Amok Time, and it's largely due to the fact that everyone owns it, no matter how goofy it gets.

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Re: 50 Favorites: Star Trek Big Five

Postby IGNORE ME » Wed Jan 20, 2021 6:29 pm

I have to give the TOS actors credit that none of them ever displayed embarrassment, frustration, or boredom with their jobs, even during Season 3 when they probably ought to have. Even to the point of being soundly mocked for doing so, the entire cast gives it their all.

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Re: 50 Favorites: Star Trek Big Five

Postby Büge » Wed Jan 20, 2021 8:55 pm

Well, yeah. Star Trek was Prestige TV when it aired.
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Re: 50 Favorites: Star Trek Big Five

Postby Esperath » Thu Jan 21, 2021 3:53 am

Friday wrote:Then they made Star Trek Generations and ruined everything. Oh well.


pisa katto

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Re: 50 Favorites: Star Trek Big Five

Postby JD » Thu Jan 21, 2021 6:35 am

and not just star trek movies, but everything

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h06WKYF ... 05&index=1

email me if you want a pizza roll

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Re: 50 Favorites: Star Trek Big Five

Postby Friday » Tue Jan 26, 2021 10:15 am

ENT:
9. E²

Enterprise's third season was dominated by the Xindi arc, a species that attacks Earth without warning, prompting proto-Starfleet to send Enterprise into "The Expanse", a fucked up region of space where the Xindi live to ask them "like, what the hell, dude?"

The third season and the Xindi arc was dreamed up by execs who noticed ENT's dwindling ratings after two seasons. Nothing gets the audience interested like Earth in danger, right? So have aliens show up and shoot a big laser at it, and if they're not stopped, soon they will be back with an even BIGGER laser! Oh no!

So after fucking around in the Expanse for a bit, the ship comes under attack from some other alien and things look grim. But suddenly, The Enterprise (but older and all patched up and weird) shows up and saves them!

What the hell? Says everyone. Then Tucker and T'pol's adult kid hails them and is like "yo, we came from the future and also the past to save you."

So it turns out that originally, in order to escape from the attacking aliens, Enterprise went through some subspace corridor or some shit and ended up like 80 years in the past. Deciding to keep out of history, they turned the Enterprise into a generational ship and decided to meet up with the normal Enterprise to help them stop the Xindi.

So the crew gets to meet all their (adult) kids and grandkids, including Tucker and T'pol, the show's "will they or won't they" sexual tension pair. Tucker is a good ol' southern boy and T'pol is a super smokin' hot Vulcan who doesn't want to get romantically involved because dude, humans.

There's a lot of handwringing over temporal ethics and such, including asking them why the hell they didn't stop the first laser, but the highlight and best part of the episode is when our T'pol goes to visit her older self, who is still alive. She asks her future self why she fucked Tucker and older T'pol is like "dude he's fuckin' hot what the hell you're wasting time get on that dick I was so sad when he died go now GO RIGHT NOW FUCK THAT SUPER HOT BOY YOU FUCK EM GOOD ACTUALLY FUCK YOU GET OUT OF MY WAY I'M GONNA GO FUCK HIM MYSELF"

Anyway then the older Enterprise vanishes due to time fuckery. The end.
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Re: 50 Favorites: Star Trek Big Five

Postby Friday » Tue Jan 26, 2021 10:26 am



VOY:
9. Bliss

Oh my god, these old fucking previews. I love them so much.

Anyway yeah this episode features the most unlikely and insane adversary imaginable: A giant space "pitcher plant" that uses telepathy to trick people into seeing it as "whatever they desire most" so they'll fly their ships right into its mouth.

So of course Voyager sees this as a wormhole going right back to Earth (complete with fake messages from home). Seven and Naomi Wildman are the only two not affected cause they don't give a fuck about Earth. (Seven because she thinks of Voyager as home, and Naomi because she was born on the ship and never knew Earth, so also thinks of Voyager as home.) Eventually the Space Plant brainwashes the crew into shutting down the Doctor and trying to put Seven into a coma because she won't shut the fuck up about how they're all being brainwashed.

Also, there's an Ahab alien dude who has been hunting this fucking thing for like ten years who tries to help them. As they wage their battle to escape the creature, they have to constantly question everything they're seeing, because the plant can read your desires (like the desire to kill it, or the desire to escape) and will make you think you've done that when in fact no, you're still inside being eaten.

It's a ridiculous concept and a ridiculous episode but it sort of just works. It continues to develop the relationship between Seven and Naomi, one of the best parts of Voyager. Pairing an innocent kiddo with a grumpy older person is always A+.
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Re: 50 Favorites: Star Trek Big Five

Postby Friday » Tue Jan 26, 2021 10:37 am



DS9:
9. Trials and Tribble-ations

The original actor for the TOS Klingon surgically altered as a human spy bumps into the Producer for DS9 in a pizza place right before the 30th anniversary of Trek.

In what Ira Steven Behr later described as the most incredible coincidence he has ever experienced, Behr and the other producers were at the Mulberry Street pizza parlor in Beverly Hills, discussing the possibility of bringing original TOS actors back for this episode, Behr mentioned Charlie Brill (Arne Darvin), who he then spotted at the counter alongside his wife. Although Behr was hesitant to discuss the matter directly with Brill (due to the complications that normally entail Hollywood negotiations), Brill was greatly honored to be given a chance to make history twice and felt that Gene Roddenberry would be proud. Behr later joked, in a DVD audio commentary for this episode, that the remarkable turn of events proved God was a DS9 fan, while Brill stated that he was happy he hadn't gone out for Chinese food instead.


TIME ORB is stolen by THIEF and THIEF has used TIME ORB to travel back to TOS and rewrite history and become the slayer of Kirk and the savior of the Klingon Empire. But not if Sisko and crew have anything to say about it!

There is no greater fanservice episode. Like, not just Trek, probably ever.

Highlights include:

1. Dax in TOS costume and loving it
2. Dax and Bones got down and dirty in one of her past lives
3. Worf explaining why TOS Klingons look like that (or not explaining it, really)
4. Sisko and Kirk meeting in person and using old footage to make it appear they were talking
5. I mean, everything

You're not gonna find a more fun episode of DS9. Except maybe the next one on this list.
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Re: 50 Favorites: Star Trek Big Five

Postby Friday » Tue Jan 26, 2021 10:46 am



TNG:
9. Time's Arrow

This episode is so stupid, god I love it so much.

Some scientists on Earth find Data's head in a cave under San Francisco, so they call up the Enterprise to come take a look. One thing leads to another and suddenly Data and the rest of the crew are time-traveled back in time to Frisco during the 19th century to fight aliens who are sucking the life force out of people and eating it.

Guinan is there, visiting Earth in her youth and making friends with Mark Twain. Data plays poker and cleans everyone out, including Gul Dukat. Jack London is a bellhop and helps Data sell cars. Picard and the crew trick an old lady into letting them stay in her hostel for free by pretending to be a traveling actor group and including her in their play. Mark Twain goes to the future and concludes "it's pretty okay I guess." Thank god he didn't go to 30 years later.

Time's Arrow has no message or moral. It's just a romp. But I love me a big stupid romp and this one is just so inventive and dumb that I can't help but think of it with extreme fondness. It does have a neat little timeloop closure event that explains how Guinan and Picard "first" met and are so close.

(Hint: They had two first meetings.)

In the end, Data gets his head blown off and they replace it with the one they picked up on Earth at the start. Lol
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Re: 50 Favorites: Star Trek Big Five

Postby Friday » Tue Jan 26, 2021 11:13 am



TOS:
9. Mirror, Mirror

The Mirror Universe, so popular with Trekkies now (and continuing to be relevant even in contemporary Trek) all began here with this episode, and it does not disappoint. Spock gets to wear a goatee, Uhura gets to bare her abs (and what fuckin' abs) and Sulu gets to be a creep.

Kirk really gets to show of his intelligence and command by almost instantly adapting to the mirror universe after the transporter malfunction, something his counterpart on Enterprise Prime is unable to achieve. There's a lot of really good moments in this episode, really. I like it because of how unflinchingly brutal it is, showing how the Federation (and therefore humanity) could go a direction very different than the Trek we all know and love. Assassination, torture, genocide, and backstabbing are no strangers to the human race, and seeing all of these things done so casually on 60s TV must have been quite shocking to audiences at the time.

Of course, this is one of the most infamous TOS episodes (if not the MOST infamous) and has been parodied and spoofed a million times. It single handedly made the goatee a "sinister" style of facial hair and reinforced that evil people also dress slutty. Kirk's last minute attempt to get Mirror-Spock to see that the Empire must eventually fall actually has ramifications later on, in DS9's mirror universe episodes.

The Mirror counterparts of Uhura and Marlena both showed their navels in various scenes. This was controversial at the time. The crew reportedly distracted the observer from Standards & Practices with a long lunch while those scenes were being filmed, thus being able to slip the navels past the censors.


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Re: 50 Favorites: Star Trek Big Five

Postby Mongrel » Tue Jan 26, 2021 5:43 pm

Friday wrote:
The Mirror counterparts of Uhura and Marlena both showed their navels in various scenes. This was controversial at the time. The crew reportedly distracted the observer from Standards & Practices with a long lunch while those scenes were being filmed, thus being able to slip the navels past the censors.


lol

That also explains how the line "Oiling my traps, darling." got past the sensors!
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Re: 50 Favorites: Star Trek Big Five

Postby Büge » Tue Jan 26, 2021 8:30 pm

Friday wrote:Spock gets to wear a goatee, Uhura gets to bare her abs (and what fuckin' abs) and Sulu gets to be a creep.


You know it's an Evil Universe because Sulu is straight.
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Re: 50 Favorites: Star Trek Big Five

Postby Friday » Wed Jan 27, 2021 3:55 am

I actually agree with Takei in that Sulu is straight, because otherwise he's closeted.

But I also don't have a problem with new Sulu being gay, unlike Takei. So I dunno.
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