This picks up from that thread on that other franchise. Can't remember the name of it now. Buck Rogers or something.
inflatable dalek wrote:I think the first film actually set up a good reason for him to be more oddball than the original Scotty (he's basically gone stir crazy), and for me it creates a nice contrast to the more straight laced others (it's telling he's the one who doesn't have a problem telling Kirk where to get off with the torpedoes).
Torpedoes that are supposed to be insanely advanced and which no one will let him look at and which they're going to use to bomb the shit out of a region on the homeworld of a race who don't need much of an excuse to start a beef with Star Fleet. All sensible warning signs and it's only Kirk being out for revenge for Pike that makes him initially not see it.It gives a good excuse for him to be the silly joke character, yes. I don't think that plays well into giving him actual, serious plotlines though. After the first one, my reaction was "Oh, Scotty's just being nuts again..." Especially since randomly flipping out over torpedoes is a bit odd to begin with. I mean, this can't be the first time that classified, experimental weapons have been loaded aboard a Starfleet ship. It's the sort of thing that happens all the time in real life.
inflatable dalek wrote:Troi certainly looked better once they put her in proper clothes.
Yeah, I mean who would want a psychiatrist dressed like that? Who could read your thoughts? Barcley reacted in the only sane way to being confronted with that.OH MY GOD YES. In spite of being nearly a decade older she was so much sexier once Jellico made her start dressing like a normal human being. Before that it was impossible to take her seriously. And her wardrobes in the films were even better. Honestly I'm not sure how they managed to make her look so bad earlier on unless they were actively trying to.
The scripts started treating her with a lot more respect around the same time, though, so I'm not sure that it was just the costume change that made her more attractive.
inflatable dalek wrote:There's a mentallity in Berman era Trek costumes that "Tight" automatically equates to "Sexy", as if being able to count a woman's ribs is a real turn on. Troi, Seven, and T'Pol (oddly Kira wore a similar catsuit but it actually worked for her somehow) were all played by women who looked much more stunning in real life they they ever did in their catsuits that often looked made out of old carpet. Sadly Troi was the only one who got to dress sensibly and then drastically add to the sex appeal, that, let's face it, was the only reason for the character being there.
Thesis in the 60's seemed to have a knack for coming up with outfits that looked basically obscene but which the women generally seemed to have enjoyed wearing, you'll often hear them saying in interviews how much they loved the clothes. Being confident in what you're wearing (and you know, able to breath. I believe Jeri Ryan passed out at least once) likely makes a huge amount of difference.Female costume designs are pretty awful all-around in TNG-and-later Trek. It says something when the blatantly oversexed stuff from the 60s show still represent the best female wardrobe the franchise has ever seen.
Yah, the FC uniforms generally looked better on everyone that the previous efforts, and in the case of the women though they were clearly tighter than those of the men they managed to still look like something you'd wear to work.Ironically she, like Troi, looked her best when they put her in a Starfleet uniform for the last few episodes of the last season. And that was pretty clearly her least sexed-up outfit of all.
inflatable dalek wrote:Odd how Crusher and the Dax's managed to avoid it.
All the women's uniform's (unless they were very old) were still the catsuit version though (to be fair, lower ranking men stayed in them after season 3 switched to the two piece as well. But if any had a decent role--Barcley, O'Brien, Wesley after his totally random promotion--they'd get the newer uniform automatically whilst Ro, Crusher and post Jellico Troi didn't), it's gratuitously sexist but leaves her with more dignity than Troi's catsuits ever did her.Crusher actually ran around in a catsuit version of the standard uniform for some reason during the TV series, even after the guys moved to the more conservatively-cut outfits in season three. But then she wore a lab coat over it 90% of the time, so I'm not sure what the point was. The overall effect was no more revealing than if they'd just put her in a looser outfit like the guys.
inflatable dalek wrote:Factor in Worf seems to be asleep, Riker looks terrible (the topless scene is the most terrifying in the film) and I'm not sure if Geordi is in it and it's an odd film for the regulars. Ironically considering he wanted to be killed off as he was getting too old to play an android, Spiner gets away with it because the make up hides a multitude of sins.
The One With Data's Mom in season 7 actually handwaves Data's changing appearance by saying he has an ageing program. It's a gratuitous retcon that contradicts all sorts of earlier lines of dialogue, but it was a sensible retcon to deal with the issue. Then they almost instantly forgot about this and come All Good Things Data is shown not to age in 20 years...TBH I think Data threw me off the most. He'd been gaining weight slowly since he started playing data but for Nemesis he was noticeably pudgy. That's not a big deal for a human character but it's a bit more obvious when the ageless robot gains weight.
If only they'd have Picard grow hair, I'd forgive the film its crap bits.Re: Riker, his beardless turn in Insurrection is way more terrifying than anything that happens in Nemesis.
inflatable dalek wrote:Hey, Picard acting in a completely different way to how he did in the episode with exactly the same plot where it was all brown people in peril and they were led by a wrinkly old man rather than a milf doesn't make it out of character, it just reveals he was a really horrible racist all along.
Yeah, shows like Redemption make it clear he'd be in his element bossing lots of ships about. A promotion to Admiral for him and Riker carrying on as Captain of the Enterprise with them teaming up every couple of years for a film would have made much more sense.That whole thing was silly anyway. Picard is the polar opposite of Kirk temperament-wise and would have loved being an admiral or retiring to become an ambassador and putter away in archaeology digs on his off-days.
Mind, Generations is a bloody awful film for Picard. I don't know if it was Moore's TOS fanboy tendencies making him overwrite Kirk as The Best or Shatner's demands, but the whole film gives them an insanely unbalanced relationship. Picard is more than Kirk's equal and their team up should have been level pegging but instead Kirk is just so much better in every way. Picard sits around cring and living a bizare Victorian fantasy and needs help to punch an old man.
Kirk's ultimate fantasy is to ruggedly chop wood up in the mountains. He saves the Enterprise in the first ten minutes of the film. He basically treats Picard as his camp sidekick. That basically undid the TNG films before they started.
inflatable dalek wrote:Tomalak was an odd one in that the character was completely generic (and not even really in his last two appearances), pretty much every other Romulan Commander could have been made him with absolutely no rewriting. That's entirely down to the actor and it's a shame both the Selar idea and Babylon 5 basically stopped him showing up.
Yeah, she might have improved if she'd stayed on the show as the other weak links did, but she really doesn't have the clout to carry Lead Villain status. All her reveal does is drag down the pace of Redemption 2 as the plot has to stop for ten minutes so she can be explained. And then Picard just goes "Well, it doesn't matter" and it never gets mentioned again. Ten minutes later Worf sees her on TV and doesn't even react!Yeah, it's a testament to how awesome Andreas Katsulas was that people loved the character in spite of him basically never doing anything of note.
I thought Sela was the coolest thing ever when I was a kid, but as an adult...wow she sucked, didn't she? Denise Crosby was probably the weakest actor from the original main cast but even then they really didn't give her much to work with.
inflatable dalek wrote:Yeah, there's actually a reasonable explanation for him being a very different character: We've only ever seen Khan as a freshly woken up in the 23rd century uncertain plotter with his charisma turned up to 11 to get people onside or as completely off his tits and driven mad by isolation and death. A version woken up early who's had time to adjust, who's been working got Starfleet for at least a few years (and the idea that the Federation would react badly to the destruction of Vulcan is a good one) should be a very different man. It's just a bad sort of different though.
I suppose if they'd just kept him That Bloke (and the Khan reveal is one of the weak areas of the film because it doesn't really explain who he is, the natural reaction to "I AM KHAN!" is "Err, great") people would just moan that having a super strong villain was just a Khan ripoff regardless of any other differences.True enough. But by the same token, if he's so changed as to be a completely different person then why even bother using Khan to start with?