Star Trek

[MisterCairo]

Get your facts right, please. There was no "shoe string budget".

I humbly apologise to the great and mighty Doctor Strange. I am repentant in my sorrow for having disparaged the production costs and values of a show created over fifty years ago.

The production costs, value and quality were on par with or better than those of current shows.

I will never disparage the show or your expertise again.

Bartender Edit: Let's all play nice, please.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Yesterday, I saw this DS9-episode for the first time!

Man, the DS9-actors in the old time! So damn great!!

What a brilliant piece of television that is. People sometimes go off on Avery Brooks for his somewhat stylized acting approach, but that's exactly what's called for in this particular episode. Especially if you know and understand the characters and their relationships thruout the series, and especially at this exact point in the "Dominion War Arc," the whole thing comes off like a punch to the gut. I remember watching it on its first airing, and sitting there in silence with the television off for about half an hour afterward just absorbing it. "You are the dreamer -- and the dream."

 

[Doctor Strange]

I have frequently said here that I don't care for DS9, that it's the only Trek series that does nothing for me... But that particular episode is outstanding!

 

[Benzadmiral]

What a brilliant piece of television that is. People sometimes go off on Avery Brooks for his somewhat stylized acting approach, but that's exactly what's called for in this particular episode. Especially if you know and understand the characters and their relationships thruout the series, and especially at this exact point in the "Dominion War Arc," the whole thing comes off like a punch to the gut. I remember watching it on its first airing, and sitting there in silence with the television off for about half an hour afterward just absorbing it. "You are the dreamer -- and the dream."

I stand in awe of Brooks. Before DS9 he embodied Hawk, the mysterious and larger than life enforcer who backed up Robert B. Parker's Spenser in nearly all the mystery novels in that series. Before Brooks as Hawk in the mid-Eighties series, I'd have said, "Who could possibly play such a character, and make it believable?" After the series: "Done."

A couple of other actors have attempted the role in other adaptations since the Eighties. None of them come close.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Trek fans are highly divided about Brooks as Sisko, I think -- some accuse him of being another Shatner in his highly-wrought approach to the part, but I think he is exactly what the character of Sisko requires. Sisko is a damaged man who's constantly on the bloody edge of losing control, stuck in a job he doesn't particularly want, with people he, in the beginning, doesn't particularly like, and trying to raise a teenage son on his own in the midst of it all. And then out of nowhere he's essentially anointed by a group of aliens -- or gods -- as their Emissary to a divided, conflicted planet.

I don't think a low-key Patrick Stewart type of actor could have even touched that role. But Brooks absolutely owns it from the very first scene, and never lets go till the very end of the series. It was a bravura performance from start to finish -- in the very first episode, Brooks as Sisko even stares down Stewart as Picard and completely dominates the scene.

Interestingly, one of the actors who auditioned for the role of Sisko back in 1992 was none other than the future Twelfth Doctor himself, Peter Capaldi. Now that would have been an interesting way to go.

 

[Trenchfriend]

The Benny Russel-timeline would have been such a great DS9-spin off!

 

[Trenchfriend]

I'm watching TNG - "When the bough breaks".

The girl, hugging Picard.

 

[Trenchfriend]

TNG "Hotel Royale", aaaaaah...

 

[scottyrocks]

I'm watching TNG - "When the bough breaks".

The girl, hugging Picard.

Is the show broadcast with German voiceovers or subtitles and/or original English?

 

[Trenchfriend]

Is the show broadcast with German voiceovers or subtitles and/or original English?

German synchro.

 

[scottyrocks]

German synchro.

I think I might find it interesting (okay - funny or maybe even hilarious) to see the cast, particularly Worf and Data, over-dubbed in German.

Actually, Worf might not be all that funny (or different). Klingon is pretty guttural.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Given that Worf, the character, was raised by foster parents in Minsk, I imagine he spoke Klingon with a Russian accent. The mind boggles.

 

[Trenchfriend]

On TNG, I really miss an episode, where the Klingons discovert Denim-jackets from earth, take of course pleasure on the rough stuff and start to import, secretly over middlemen, with positive effects on the connections between the Federation and the Klingon Empire, but on an illegal ways. And then, after information from the Federations secret-sevices, the Enterprise D has to be send for further investigation.

The story could be proceed the typcial way, that Picard has to decide moralic between sweeping such things under the table and take the positive effects or fight for legality. With an expected showdown, like Picard recognizing, that Starfleet Command is partly involved in black-market and things like this.

 

[scottyrocks]

Given that Worf, the character, was raised by foster parents in Minsk, I imagine he spoke Klingon with a Russian accent. The mind boggles.

"Ooocchh. Acchh. Vodka. Borscht."

 

[scottyrocks]

On TNG, I really miss an episode, where the Klingons discovert Denim-jackets from earth, take of course pleasure on the rough stuff and start to import, secretly over middlemen, with positive effects on the connections between the Federation and the Klingon Empire, but on an illegal ways. And then, after information from the Federations secret-sevices, the Enterprise D has to be send for further investigation.

The story could be proceed the typcial way, that Picard has to decide moralic between sweeping such things under the table and take the positive effects or fight for legality. With an expected showdown, like Picard recognizing, that Starfleet Command is partly involved in black-market and things like this.

I saw that one. Great episode.

 

[Trenchfriend]

I saw that one. Great episode.

??

 

[Doctor Strange]

I am ashamed to admit that I had never heard of this guy, but he's another unsung hero of the original series:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/03/...indstaff-star-trek-sound-whiz-dies-at-87.html

 

[Tiki Tom]

I was always told that in the original Captain Kirk Star Trek series, the Klingons were thinly veiled stand-ins for the Cold War Russians; right down to their dressing like Cossacks, speaking gutteraly, and acting like Krushchev.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Yeah, that's true. TOS was essentially New Frontiers Democrats in space. Look at an episode like "Errand of Mercy" (the first major appearance of the Klingons) where Kirk is arguing to the (seemingly) weak and primitive Organians that the Federation will bring them "schools and hospitals" a la the Peace Corps... vs. the repressive rule of the evil Klingon Empire.

Of course, by the time TNG was airing it was the era of détente... so you had a truce with the Klingons, a Klingon officer as a member of the bridge crew, and a captain who always sought empathic, diplomatic solutions vs. the shoot-first approach of Captain Kirk.

 

[LizzieMaine]

By the DS9 era. the Federation was even more an analogy of the post-Cold War US, complete with smile-to-your-face imperialism and a secret security force that would stop at no kind of intrigue, scheming, and murder in order to achieve the Federation's political goals. Outsider races like the Cardassians and Ferengi were often used to point out the hypocrisy demonstrated between the Federation's lofty statements and the reality of how it implemented its policy, as was the whole storyline dealing with the Maquis. As the Maquis renegade Eddington told Sisko to his face, "You're even worse than the Borg -- at least they *tell* you you're going to be assimilated! The Federation assimilates you and you don't even know it!"