Topic: Rate the last TV show you've seen

[Seacor]

I always enjoy watching TNG's Yesterday's Enterprise and is in my top list of TNG episodes.  This is the episode where a temporal rift twists up the current timeline when the 20+ year old Enterprise C (with Tasha Yar) emerges into the timeline. The federation is at war with the Klingon empire and is nearly defeated.

Tapestry is also another favorite. This is where Picard is near death and Q allows him to go back in time to relive a portion of his life as an Ensign.  I also agree that Best of Both Worlds and Inner Light are great episodes as well.

[Halbred]

I liked the Moriarty episode of TNG with the big twist ending. That was kind of mind-blowing the first time I saw it, and it holds up today. Moriarty was a great villain.

I also liked the episode of Voyager with the Borg "children" who were freed from the collective but kept being sent into space as a sort of ritualistic offering to keep the Borg off their lawns. That episode featured particularly good character development for Seven.

Actually, one of the most interesting aspects of the later Voyager episodes was the mentor/apprentice relationship between Seven and Janeway.

[Art_de_Cat]

I havent really kept up with many tv series lately. The last full one being aired on TV was Avatar The Last Airbender.  I do still enjoy watching Law & Order, and Full Metal Alchemist when I can catch it on Cartoon Network if it is still on.

[Plugabugz]

How about something like "The Visitor" on Deep Space 9? I'd say it's one of the most emotionally powerful episodes of any Star Trek, but it gets reset at the end and nobody remembers what happened.

That episode easily is the best of any Star Trek (including the movies), and yes it had a reset button

I think "The Inner Light" from Star Trek: TNG (that's the one where Picard gets zapped by an alien gizmo and lives out a lifetime as another person, right?) might have to disagree with you there.  "All Good Things" (the TNG series finale) and "Best of Both Worlds: Part 1" are also strong candidates for that honor.

This will get me in hot water but Sisko was far better at gathering my attention. I don't want to degrade into X is better than Y but In The Pale Moonlight and his entire monologue is also a strong reason for why i like him so much.

TNG had great episodes too, but the story arc in DS9 set it apart from the other 4 series.

[NWR_insanolord]

How about something like "The Visitor" on Deep Space 9? I'd say it's one of the most emotionally powerful episodes of any Star Trek, but it gets reset at the end and nobody remembers what happened.

That episode easily is the best of any Star Trek (including the movies), and yes it had a reset button

I think "The Inner Light" from Star Trek: TNG (that's the one where Picard gets zapped by an alien gizmo and lives out a lifetime as another person, right?) might have to disagree with you there.  "All Good Things" (the TNG series finale) and "Best of Both Worlds: Part 1" are also strong candidates for that honor.

This will get me in hot water but Sisko was far better at gathering my attention. I don't want to degrade into X is better than Y but In The Pale Moonlight and his entire monologue is also a strong reason for why i like him so much.

TNG had great episodes too, but the story arc in DS9 set it apart from the other 4 series.

I agree with that last sentence 100%. DS9's writing is way better than that of any of the other series on a much more consistent basis. I think the biggest problem with Voyager was that it was too much like TNG and not enough like DS9. A Voyager with the tone of DS9, showing the desperation of the situation they were in, trapped and alone in the Delta Quadrant, would have been so much better than the way they did it. Enterprise had that problem early on, but I think they struck the right balance in the third and especially the fourth seasons.

[broodwars]

The big problem with DS9, though, is that the writers didn't start actually taking the Dominion War as something worth following till the 6th season, and they didn't really commit to it till the 7th.  Until then, the show just constantly flipped between caring about the Dominion War and focusing on the latest thingy of the week.  DS9 was a great show, but it took for-frickin'-EVER to get to the meat of the show.

[NWR_insanolord]

If they'd focused on it more earlier on it would have been over too soon or stretched too thin. I think the way they did it was the best of both worlds, allowing them to have a core storyline, but also letting them do other things.

[ThePerm]

The big problem with DS9, though, is that the writers didn't start actually taking the Dominion War as something worth following till the 6th season, and they didn't really commit to it till the 7th.  Until then, the show just constantly flipped between caring about the Dominion War and focusing on the latest thingy of the week.  DS9 was a great show, but it took for-frickin'-EVER to get to the meat of the show.

actually, the wart being in the background is kinda a realistic thing, things like wars are of little concern until your forced to be involved. Like during WWII, U.S. Kinda avoided it until the Japanese forced them to get in.

[broodwars]

If they'd focused on it more earlier on it would have been over too soon or stretched too thin. I think the way they did it was the best of both worlds, allowing them to have a core storyline, but also letting them do other things.

IMO, the way they handled the Dominion War did stretch it out too thin, though.  If I remember correctly, the first open hostilities started somewhere around the finale to season 3.  Then for the next few years the writers basically gave off this half-hearted tone of "hey, did you hear there was a war going on?  Oh, but more importantly..."  Then suddenly in Season 6 it was as if the writers walked into the room and went "what the...hey, who left this war in here?!  Dude, there's a WAR going on here!"  It was so hard to take the Dominion War seriously for so many years because the show wasn't taking it seriously.  You're probably right that they couldn't have focused on it so hard all that earlier and made it work (Babylon 5 is a perfect example of the concept getting stretched too thin), but I could have done without 3 or so seasons of waiting for something to actually happen.  They didn't need to do so much teasing, especially since the almighty Dominion War was the only reason I even started watching DS9 from the beginning.

[NWR_insanolord]

Most of those 3 years it wasn't actually a war, though; it was more of a cold war. There was clearly tension there, but fighting didn't break out until later. Dominion forces didn't even come through the wormhole until the middle of the 5th season, and major fighting started pretty soon after that, as the Season 5 finale involved the Dominion taking Deep Space 9. (I'm part proud and part ashamed that I didn't know all that by heart; I had to consult Memory Alpha.)

[Halbred]

I largely agree. I remember the final few seasons of DS9 really drew out that war. Remember how Voyager just got ass-deep in Borg crap for the last like three seasons? That's how I felt about the Dominion War.

I was also somewhat disappointed in DS9's finale because that episode wrapped up the war, AND NOTHING ELSE. It's because DS9 eventually became "that Star Trek series about the Dominion War." At least Voyager's finale brought closure to the entire arc of the show: Janeway ensuring that her crew gets back home.

[NWR_insanolord]

The DS9 finale also brought closure to the story arc of the Bajoran religion and Sisko's ties to it.

[Halbred]

That's true. I thought the "final battle" between Sisko and Gul Ducat was surprisingly disappointing. Sisko basically just shoved him into a lava pit or whatever that was.

[broodwars]

I had similar issues with the finale to DS9 as I did to the Battlestar Galactica finale (both, not-so-coincidentally, written by Ronald D. Moore): both are really stirring and emotionally satisfying finales destroyed by really half-assed/pretentious conclusions.  I can just see the writers room now for "What you leave Behind...":

Writer 1: "Wow, we have 1:40:00 of pure awesomness.  We resolved the Dominion War, we gave each character a proper send-off with a touching farewell speech, and we got it all done just in time for tomorrow's 9 AM deadline!"

Writer 2: "Yeah....oh crap, we forgot about Dukat!  Quick, to the Batcave!"

*5 minutes later*

Writer 2: "Ok, Dukat unleashes Zuul (Not Safe for Work), and then Sisko kills him.  And then he becomes a God...some...how.  Oh well, off you go!"

To Deep Space Nine's credit, at least its rushed conclusion was only the last 20 minutes, not the entire second hour like Galactica's finale suffered under.

[NWR_insanolord]

Deus ex machina isn't a problem when the gods are established characters on the show.


What bothers me about the DS9 finale is that Sisko's gone for pretty much no reason. I get that he went to be with the Prophets for a while, but it was clearly established that they exist outside linear time. He could stay with them for as long as they needed him, and still be back in his office on the station 2 minutes after he left, but the ending has him gone indefinitely just for effect.

[TJ Spyke]

The ending to that scene was pretty fitting to me. Sisko (the emissary of the prophets and essentially "good") sacrificed himself to defeat Dukat (the epitome of "evil") once and for all. Sisko was rescued by the prophets but not allowed to return to Bajor due to a earlier promise made by the prophets. When the Federation Alliance was re-taking Deep Space 9 and theDefiant was in the wormhole trying to stop thousands of Dominion ships from getting through, Sisko and the crew were willing to sacrifice themselves fighting the Dominion. The prophets didn't accept this, but Sisko told them that he was trying to protect Bajor. When the prophets said they didn't involve themselves in corporeal matters, Siskso called them out on that and pointed out that they had gotten involved multiple times. Sisko even told them "You want to be gods, then BE gods" when saying that the only way Bajor would survive would be to stop the Dominion ships from getting through the wormhole. The prophets told him that he would never be able to return to Bajor. Sisko was actually supposed to die with no chance of coming back and Sisko becoming a prophet, but after shooting the scene Avery Brooks said he was unhappy with the scene as he was uncomfortable with the fact that they were basically having a black man leave his pregnant black wife to raise their child alone. That is why they quickly made the change. It's fitting that Sisko would become a prophet though since he was created by the prophets (the "Sarah" prophet inhabited the body of Sisko's mom, had her marry Sisko's dad, get pregnant and give birth to Sisko before leaving Sarah's body). It was not his choice to leave, they decided that it was finally his time to join them like they had basically been telling him for years.

[NWR_insanolord]

I'm just saying, unless he was never coming back, which they seemed to indicate was not the case, there's no reason he couldn't come back immediately, at least from the perspective of our timeline.

[TJ Spyke]

Maybe, but I guess part of that was because as I pointed out the scene was supposed to end with Sisko telling Kassidy that he was never coming back (they even shot the scene that way). Had they changed it before production started, they may have done something. The way I see it, Sisko could be happy with the prophets and just see Kassidy and their kid by coming to them in visions.

Not to open a can of worms, but this got me thinking about the Enterprise finale. That was very controversial as the entire finale was nothing more than a holodeck recreation (based on a real event, but still on the holodeck) set during a season 7 TNG episode ("The Pegasus"). There is also the fact that many fans, myself included, thought that killing Tucker and the way they did it was such a let-down. The ending scene was great though with them blending the three Enterprises (NX-01, 1701, and 1701-D) and having the "These are the Voyages" opening spoken by Archer/Kirk/Picard.

[broodwars]

Not to open a can of worms, but this got me thinking about the Enterprise finale. That was very controversial as the entire finale was nothing more than a holodeck recreation (based on a real event, but still on the holodeck) set during a season 7 TNG episode ("The Pegasus"). There is also the fact that many fans, myself included, thought that killing Tucker and the way they did it was such a let-down. The ending scene was great though with them blending the three Enterprises (NX-01, 1701, and 1701-D) and having the "These are the Voyages" opening spoken by Archer/Kirk/Picard.

That episode does not exist.  Its sheer putrid horribleness tore open a rift in space-time that wiped it from the face of the universe.  Enterprise ended with "Terra Prime", and let's let it remain that way.

[NWR_insanolord]

"These Are The Voyages" taking place entirely in a holodeck simulation is the one thing that saves it. That one minor story choice opens the loophole that the Enterprise relaunch novels (which are completely awesome and I highly recommend to everyone) use to say that's not exactly what happened.

[King of Twitch]

What's everyone think of Redemption part I and II from TNG? I've tried watching it twice and just can't care, but I liked the other Klingon themed episodes.

[NWR_insanolord]

What's everyone think of Redemption part I and II from TNG? I've tried watching it twice and just can't care, but I liked the other Klingon themed episodes.

It's one of my favorite TNG episodes. I'm of the opinion that Worf didn't really get that good as a character until he was on DS9, but I thought that episode was among his best on TNG.

[broodwars]

One last thing on that last bit of that Enterprise episode that doesn't exist, TJ Spike: yes, the last 30 seconds or so was pretty cool, but there was just one little problem with it from the perspective of an Enterprise fan.  See if you can figure out what it was. 

[TJ Spyke]

I remember the rumors that they wanted to have Archer actually say that in a new opening. It's a shame that they never got to do a fifth season since Manny Coto (who was a writer on the series and became showrunner in season 4) had some great ideas planned. Shran may have joined Enterprise as an adviser, they would have had a story arc showing the origins of the Federation (rather than having to cram it into the series finale), have the Romulans become major villians in order to foreshadow the Earth-Romulan War (which would have started in the shows possible sixth season as the war started in 2156), a major revisit to the Mirror Universe (possible four or five episodes in a mini-arc to show Hoshi Sato after she proclaimed herself Empress of the Terran Empire), have Alice Krige (who played the Borg Queen in Star Trek: First Contact and the series finale of Star Trek: Voyager) play a medical technician who makes contact with the Borg and becomes the Borg Queen, and to have T'Pol meet her father and reveal that he is Romulan (making her half-Vulcan/half-Romulan). They also planned to do a prequel to the Star Trek: The Animated Series episode "The Slaver Weapon", which would have made the Kzinti canon.

There is also the intriguing idea that Russel T. Davies wanted to do a Enterprise/Doctor Who crossover, but those plans were nixed due to Enterprise being canceled.

[NWR_insanolord]

Seriously, everyone, read the Enterprise relaunch novels. They fixed it so Trip didn't die, told the original story behind the Kobayashi Maru, and started the Romulan War. They've explained how a few things fit into continuity, and are actually attempting to explain in a semi-reasoned way why TOS era things look the way they do despite being from 100 years after Enterprise.