My thoughts on Star Trek, round one

[swan_tower]

This is spoiler-free, because I'm not really reviewing the movie per se -- more talking about why I never cared about Star Trek (in any of its incarnations), and why this movie managed to hook me where the previous attempts failed. I'll still put it behind a cut, though, for length.


Let me say up front what my familiarity with the franchise consists of: the most recent four or five movies, The Wrath of Khan, and a double handful of random eps of the different series (TOS, TNG, Voyager, Enterprise -- the only one I've missed entirely is DS9, which ironically is the one I'd probably like best). So if you find yourself wanting to make a comment in the vein of "but you're wrong, they did that thing over here in this part of that series," consider it made. I'm talking about my perception of the show, not an exhaustive survey of its texts.

Having said that: the future of Star Trek just never interested me.

I read a recent article by one of the old TNG writers, and discovered that one of my main gripes was no accident; it was fiat from On High, i.e. Gene Roddenberry. Namely, the lack of internal conflict. The guy actually believed (or at least dictated for his setting) that by the twenty-fourth century, the human race would have evolved past social conflict. No, really. And the instant I read that, I thought, huh -- no wonder the Federation always bored me.

Don't get me wrong; if I had to pick a future to live in for real, that one sounds pretty nice. But I don't believe in it, and I don't much care about it, because if you have no internal conflict then it all has to be external (evil aliens! moster of the week!), and that gets old for me real fast. I want both. I want political disagreements and philosophical disagreements and characters who plain don't like each other and never will, without it being a matter of villainy. Which is not to say I require bleak and gritty futures, either -- I like a balance. And that's what I got here. Two responses friends of mine have made to the movie pulled out the exact words I was looking for, which is to say that this film came across as optimistic, but not utopian. Star Trek always felt too utopian to me, the Federation too perfect, for it to engage my interest.

It manifests in small ways, too. One of the things I loved about Firefly was that the world of the narrative looked lived-in: things got scratched and dirty (and not just in climactic battles), rooms looked inhabited, clothes looked like people actually wore them. Star Trek's locations always looked like sets to me, and the clothes always looked like costumes. This is partly a matter of budget, of course, and when you get down to it I wasn't a fan of the new movie's Starfleet uniforms, which pretty much looked like long-sleeved shirts. (I liked the cadet uniforms, though, because the fabric was heavy enough not to rumple.) But the mechanical underbellies of the ships, the scratches on the shuttles, the Academy dorm room . . . those things looked more real to me in this iteration. Less utopian. Less fake.

When Enterprise got canceled, I got into a discussion with some friends about these reasons for my disinterest in Star Trek, and what I would love to see out of an ST series. You see, I'd read a very salient argument from someone, that the dedicated fanbase was too attached to a rigid model for the premise: a series has to feature a ship, which travels around to different places encountering aliens they have conflicts with, and the protagonists are the ship's top officers. DS9's the only one to substantially break that model, and only partly then. But that premise limits the stories you can tell, and to some extent requires a consistent bit of illogic: in reality, as people have often pointed out, the top officers are not going to be the ones beaming down to a planet to go exploring. You can do political plots with them (as BSG did, quite well), but not so much with adventure. Therefore, what I really wanted to see was a series about a group of hotshot young ensigns fresh out of the Academy and bent on making names for themselves in the Fleet.

Mind you, every time I say this, people respond in horror: "You want an entire series of WESLEY CRUSHER?" Which, no. But that character type doesn't have to be annoying. And the advantage of it is that you have characters with ambition and room to grow -- which means you've given them personal goals -- and limited resources, influence, authority, with which to achieve them -- now you've created obstacles. They'll be inexperienced, they'll doubt themselves, they'll try for and sometimes achieve the impossible because they don't know it can't be done.

In other words, this movie.

And that's the biggest selling point for me. That's what's fresh. I adore watching people prove themselves for the first time; I live for the moments when they get to take their native talent and untested education and see just what they're capable of. It isn't the only kind of story I can enjoy, of course, but it's a new angle for Star Trek (at least in TV and film, though I understand the books have covered it), and it's one with the power to hook me. Give me a universe with prejudice, conflicts of authority, fistfights in bars -- all the interpersonal and intrasocietal conflict that always seemed to be lacking -- and a bunch of characters with a whole arc of growth ahead of them, and I'm halfway bought already.

Which is why this is the first Star Trek film ever that I was actively excited to go see. And I enjoyed it very much.

I'll probably post more of a review-type response later, talking about specific details and how they struck me (mostly good, a couple of bad, several highly interesting, especially from a writing-craft standpoint). But I wanted to toss that out there. The things I liked are probably the very aspects pissing off the purists, but hey. If they want to relaunch the franchise, they need a fresh expansion of their audience. And for my own part, if they do more movies or a TV show that take this as their starting point, I'll be in the theatre or on my couch, ready to be entertained.

Comments

[gornishka.livejournal.com]

I come from a "grew up watching TNG, but am not hardcore Trekkie purist" background, but I agree with you completely about Star Trek's narrative possibilities in general being hamstrung by the anti-internal conflict mandate.

It's been a while since I watched any DS9, but if I'm not completely misremembering it, yes, they did make a fair amount of use of internal conflict.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I just . . . don't understand setting things up that way. Probably because I start with the narrative, not with the philosophical agenda I want to promote, which seems to have been more of a driving force for Roddenberry. But it's like Valdemar for me: nice place, living there wouldn't suck, but the stories feel like a pair of jaws with teeth on just one side. They never really manage to bite down as hard as I wish they could.

[celestinenox]

I can see what you're saying, definitely, and I still think you should give every series other than the original one a try, from the beginning if you can.

TNG has internal conflict. Not as much as DS9, mind you, but it has it (the episode that comes immediately to mind is the one wherein Picard and the crew have to fight a legal battle over Data's viability as a person to save him from being dismantled and studied by a scientist who considers him nothing more than a sophisticated bucket of bolts). There are incredibly psychological episodes as well, and one that explores the beginning of and connection between the humanoid races in the galaxy (with reactions from the Klingon and Cardassian characters I think you would enjoy).

Not every episode has what you're talking about, no, because I believe the series started out still heavily influenced by Gene Roddenberry and his decrees, but there are episodes where you'll find it... episodes where Picard and his crew have to fight other members of the Federation, or Starfleet, to accomplish the goal they know is the right course of action.

Voyager makes use of internal conflict as well, though I don't know how much you'd consider it that way, as in the beginning there's definitely a mentality of us vs> them as in Starfleet vs. the Maquis characters on board. Part of the goal of at least the first couple of seasons is for these groups with vastly disparate philosophical differences to learn to live and work together.

Yes, definitely DS9 is the series for you, there's loads of conflict there from external to internal. All I'm saying is that the other series (again, other than the original) don't entirely lack that quality. It's just more subtle.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I still think you should give every series other than the original one a try, from the beginning if you can.

If I try this approach, I will fail. Because I've tried to watch the beginning of TNG, and stopped a few eps in. It's the same problem I have with Babylon 5: you can tell me all you like that there are important things in the first season, setting up stuff that comes later, but when I'm watching it for the first time, none of that means much to me. All I see are the scripts I desperately want to re-write. The only real hope I have of enjoying TNG is if I start in season three or thereabouts, get invested with the good stuff, and then back up to the earlier eps.

(I am also, I should admit, kind of poisoned by the mantra I've heard from way too many Trekkies: "Well, yeah, the first season or two of each series kind of sucks, but you have to watch that and then it gets good." To which I say, how many shows get the luxury of sucking for a year or two before they shape up? I honestly do think that's led to some laziness on the part of the shows' writers, because they know they've got a built-in fanbase that will stick with them while they figure out what they're doing. Me, I don't have that kind of patience.)

I know the various series aren't utterly devoid of internal conflict; you can't have that many cumulative years of episodes without some kind of strife inside the Federation. But your TNG example still sounds like Our Heroes vs. The Other Guy; what about within the crew? How often do you get serious personality clashes between Picard and Riker, or Worf feeling betrayed by Troi, or other large-scale interpersonal drama? (Names and situations picked out of a hat, for the record; I've probably created at least one really bizarre scenario in people's minds.) Plots like the Federation making peace with the Klingons are moderately interesting to me, but I also want to have a bigger range of dynamics among the core cast, and conversations with other Trekkies have given me to understand that what I'm looking for really isn't there, not strongly and consistently enough to engage me.

I don't mean that to rain or your parade, btw. There are plenty of other things to enjoy about the shows; they just aren't the kind of things that attract me enough to overcome the other hurdles in the way.

[elialshadowpine]

I think you probably would like DS9, from what you've said about internal conflict. Unlike the other shows, there are massive amounts of conflict within characters and between characters, and that's not counting big-picture external. Of all the shows, its characters are the most rounded IMO. Shades of grey, and it's hard to pin down characters as a certain archetype and that alone (which I like).

TNG and Voyager had internal conflict, as another poster mentioned, but it's not as visible from episode to episode as it is in DS9. (Although, I'd caution that DS9 does not really develop until the 2nd season and if you catch 1st season eps... don't expect to be grabbed. When I re-watch the series, I skip it entirely.)

I just got out of seeing the movie. I loved it. I've been a closet Trek fan (2nd generation!) for awhile but have been extremely disappointed ever since DS9 ended and Voyager became the Seven of Nine Soap Opera. Let's not even talk about Enterprise...

[celestinenox]

May I butt in here for a second just to say, Seven and Chakotay, whut? I never did understand that.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

As I said above, if I decide to give any ST series a concerted second chance, I'll probably skip the first season. Yeah, that means I'll be confused about some things, but if I'm to have a chance of caring, I need to start with the good stuff. And ST shows have too much of a pattern of weak first seasons.

Enterprise . . . I saw one ep, and the entire plot would have never happened if a single character stopped to rub two brain cells together. Watched a second ep, and well, let me just say it was either the same week as or the week after Firefly's "Out of Gas," and the contrast between two "the ship breaks down" plots could not have been more painful.

Sadly, I wasn't even that impressed by "The City on the Edge of Forever," which is always held up as one of the classics of the entire franchise. It wasn't terrible, but it also didn't move me, even on a script level (divorced from the acting).

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I think one of the things that doesn't work for me about the conflict-free humanity inside the Federation is that the humans we see don't behave enough differently to make it plausible to me. If we were going on the assumption that the other species were more human than the humans any more, because the humans had developed past internal conflict, that might be interesting (briefly), but it's not at all what they've done with ST.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I almost said that, if we're talking about a conflict-free race, we aren't talking about Homo sapiens anymore.

But I can't imagine that working as the premise of a TV series. A really neat short story or even a couple such, maybe. In the long haul, though, you need to be able to empathize with the characters, and it's hard to do that when they're fundamentally alien.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

I was going to recommend Babylon-5, but I see you mention it. Still, bad 1st season scripts notwithstanding, I think it had a lot more general social conflict than even DS9 had. Labor strikes, fights over money, political disagreements, dealing with religious issues, how to treat telepaths... eventually, full blown civil war. It's terribly flawed but if you were going to get into any SF TV I'd rec that one. (Or maybe Blake's 7, I've heard of it as "the world for which ST is the propaganda", but never seen it and it's hard to find.)

And if you're willing to skip a season, I suppose starting with season 2 B-5 could work. Or partway through season 1.

ST TOS at least still had money; I think Roddenberry's utopian vision got cranked up even more in TNG, though you had "we're beyond money" in ST4:"Save the Whales" too. But that'd be late Roddenberry too. The Prime Directive was another source of conflict, sort of. You never actually see much of the Federation to judge its conflict, just rogues like Harvey Mudd; social conflict probably gets offloaded onto all the human worlds they ran across, racism and warfare and weird cultures. Interpersonal, well, there's the classic Spock-McCoy griping.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I actually believe that if I were to watch the rest of B5, I would like it. And I intend to do that . . . someday. But the first season (of which I watched the entirety) just really underwhelmed me.

I think Roddenberry's utopian vision got cranked up even more in TNG

That fits with what I remember of the article by the TNG writer. He kind of came out and said it got better after Roddenberry passed away, and wasn't there to control things so much anymore.

[akashiver.livejournal.com]

I'm with you.

Personally, I really enjoyed many of the post-1st season episodes of STTNG I saw. It was too many years ago for me to analyze their script structure, but some of them I remember as being great standalone stories. The one in which the ship keeps being destroyed and the narrative keeps restarting, for example. The vaguely Philip K Dick-esque Game episode in which Wesley has to save the crew from an addictive computer game that's really a form of mind control. The one where they meet the Borg for the 1st time. The last Moriarty episode, with its fictions inside of fictions and Picard breaking the forth wall.

I can't remember a multiple episode arc in STTNG *apart* from Picard's capture by the Borg. I remember it as an anthology of sci-fi tales that used the same characters week after week, and occasionally did something to tweak their relationships. That's really the format "ship traveling through space! Very little human conflict!" encourages.

I remember watching the first couple of seasons of DS9 as they aired and losing interest. The utopian politics of Trek was heavy-handed, and their opening arcs were clumsy. I just didn't care about any of these characters, and the standalone stories weren't enough to grip me. I hear that the later seasons of DS9 improved as they stopped trying to be a stationary STTNG and began to be more independent from the Trek format, but by that time I'd stopped watching.

The problem, in other words, is that Trek's basic storytelling format was perfectly adapted for an older, pre-DVD model of television. By keeping the characters the same and placing them in different situations each week, anyone who tuned in would be entertained, and wouldn't have to do a lot of mental legwork to catch up on what was going on. Shows that departed from this model - i.e. Babylon 5 - really suffered, because the fact was that only hardcore fans were going to tape and catch up on its storylines. I remember an old boyfriend trying to get me hooked on Bab 5 by lending me the first three seasons - on about 200 video tapes. I had to stack them up in a small mountain in my living room. I tried to get through them all, I really did, but in the end they had to go. People kept tripping over them.

DVDs changed that, confirming our place in a multi-episode arc era. You can write a show differently now, when it has become the norm for people to start watching shows on DVD and transfer over to watching them as they air. It's one of the reasons I guess it's appropriate that Paramount gave the new movie to Abrams, whose name is pretty much synonymous with the long tv arc.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Oh hey, Abrams did Felicity and Lost. Those... aren't recommendations for me.

200 tapes, ow. He must have gone for quality. If you use the long tapes, T-160? high density recording, and cut out the commercials as it tapes, you can get 11 episodes onto one tape. I've got a medium-sized box of all of B-5, Angel, and Buffy, on about 30 odd tapes. Which I can't watch since I sold you my TV, but I've got DVDs for B-5 and Buffy, if not Angel.

"utopian" and "DS9" amuses me but I only saw the later seasons.

Of course, rumor was that DS9 was literally stolen from JMS's pitch of B-5 ideas to Paramount.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I think you're completely right about the mode of storytelling. And it's definitely true that I'm an arc-plot kind of girl; even shows like Buffy, which have episodic monster-of-the-week stretches, are usually developing character arcs around the edges of the one-off plots. Which is kind of why I keep using The Sandbaggers as my touchstone for comparison; it aired '78-'80, so it's old, and it's very much one-off plots with only occasional callbacks to previous eps, but its writing and characterization blew my head up. Then again, not everybody's Ian Mackintosh.

Some retrospective I read argued that DS9 hit its stride after TNG went off the air (thus getting it out from under that shadow). Which kind of fits with what you said.

[jenlyn-b.livejournal.com]

Count me down as another one who's only seen a bit of the different TV series, always got bored very quickly and moved on, but absolutely LOVED the movie. The character arcs! The funny dialogue! *happy sigh*

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Yup. The characters had PASSION. And I don't just mean Spock/Uhura; I meant they burned with the kind of energy I don't usually associate with Star Trek.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Yep, yep, yep.

I watched the original--not at the time, as I was a teen and my dad controlled the TV. He had no interest in sf, so I only heard about Trek from friends. But when he was given a second TV in 1969 for a business boost, and the folks set that in their bedroom, I got to watch Trek on reruns, and of course was still close enough to the timeperiod for the cheesiness factor to escape me--everything was cheesy in those days.

But I lost interest in the rest of the franchise later, for exactly the reasons you named.

I am so looking forward to this movie.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

It isn't perfect, of course. But it gives me enough to love that I happily skate right past the logical inconsistencies and appallingly bad science. And you know, I'm more than willing to enjoy that kind of thing.

[(Anonymous)]

Probably the best strategy would be to find friends who know the opening seasons of DS9 and B5 (not to say later seasons of the former) very well, who also understand your complaints (which are quite valid {g}), and then have them give you a list of "critical eps".

Which, on the other hand, is harder to do with those two shows because the writers have a habit of building in long-running plot points as secondary material. So you'll be watching an ep with an A-story that doesn't necessarily amount to much (though as everyone has said, there's a lot more internal conflict in those two shows than what you've seen of ST so far), but the B-story is ultra-super-important.


On yet the other hand, since you've already watched several B5 first season eps, you could poll concerning critical eps for the first season (and I would say also the second season--after about 2/3 of the way through Season 2 all the eps become critical out through the end of season 4, where you might as well end the series {wry g}); see if you're missing any you haven't seen yet; watch those; and then proceed onward.


Bonus: unlike other Star Trek shows, DS9 actually lives up to its pluralism ideals in taking religion seriously, for better as well as for worse. B5 kind-of does, too (though in another way it might be said that the resolution of the cosmic arc near the beginning of season 4 rather backhands that premise. But still, between the two series I'd have to go with B5 overall for density of quality, so to speak.)

Hope that was helpful. {s} Back to lurking.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Though B-5 still suffers from a bit of alien monoculture problem. Aliens have conflicts -- power struggles in all three main races -- but Centauri and Minbari just show one culture. For the Narn, there is a hint that G'Kar and Na'toth don't follow the same religion.

DS9 seemed a bit schizo to me. Bajoran worship of powerful aloof wormhole aliens was treated respectfully, Dominion worship of powerful aliens who'd actually created the Dominion races was treated as an abusive fraud. Not that the Founders *weren't* abusive and controlling, but still...

[beccastareyes]

One of the things early (TOS and TNG) Trek had was a very episodic structure -- there are a few episodes that do follow each other pretty closely*, but most of them are pretty stand alone. It does make it easier to be a casual fan, and to some extent, a space ship out exploring is harder to do ongoing plots, but I agree... there could have been more on-going conflict. DS9 does it a bit better, in that it starts with characters in conflict by having non-Federation main characters and a Federation character suddenly put in an unfamiliar role, and another dealing with family issues**. It still takes the writers about the first third of the series to figure out what they've got to work with, though. (There is a couple of good episodes early on. Duet is one of my favorites.)

* The Data episodes, or the ones with the Borg in TNG. Picard and Data get the best episodes in that sense. Well, and Worf and his coping with discovering his own culture.

** I recall an interview that said that, if they were going to do DS9 over again, they'd make Jadzia have Ezri's backstory, in that she was a young Trill that suddenly had a symbiont and nine lifetimes worth of memories. I could also imagine they'd integrate in the Bashir-genetically-engineered backstory they sprung out of nowhere. They might also stretch out Sisko's healing around his wife's death to more than the pilot, or do more about the O'Briens' marriage (though they did a lot with Keiko trying to deal with making her own career now that her husband was transferred).

I wonder if seeing that arcs can succeed in SF/dramatic television -- see BSG and most of Joss Whedon's work, not to mention things like Lost -- would make a new or retelling of Trek series different than the older stuff. Personally, I'd rather see a mix of character ages/spots in life -- I liked DS9's mix of characters, actually.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Babylon-5! I think it defined "story arc" for American TV SF. And actually was planned ahead, whereas I don't believe that of anything Joss has done.

[kendokamel.livejournal.com]

...how many shows get the luxury of sucking for a year or two before they shape up? I honestly do think that's led to some laziness on the part of the shows' writers, because they know they've got a built-in fanbase that will stick with them while they figure out what they're doing.

Wil Wheaton (who played the aforementioned Wesley Crusher) has written several bits about this very notion. It was interesting to hear it coming from someone who'd been "on the inside", since it confirmed what many of the rest of us have thought.

I can see how the "Utopian society" of the Federation has been used as a series of morality plays dressed up in space suits, and I can also see where (especially to contemporary audiences) that pattern can start to get old or boring rather quickly. (I find myself skipping over the preachier bits when I'm watching. Give me the action! The actual conflict! I don't need characters on a tv show acting like my dad.)

I think First Contact did a halfway decent job of addressing the cracks in the veneer of the shiny Federation ideals. (Once you look past the convenient time-travel plot, of course.) There is a scene where Picard is determined to carry out his plan of trying to defeat the Borg by fighting them down to the very last man (because someone has to make a stand, goshdarnit!), and an "outsider" character calls bullshit on his notion.


All that being said, I really loved the new movie. I'll admit, I was very nervous going in, because I didn't want it to suck. In a way, it kind of did the same thing for me as that scene in First Contact did for its characters - it showed that, well, maybe The Way We've Always Done It does not work, anymore, but here's a different way to do it (that might be scary because it's Different) that just might work.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Wil Wheaton (who played the aforementioned Wesley Crusher) has written several bits about this very notion.

Can you give me a quick summary, or point me at an easy place to find his thoughts?

I've always better with the Star Trek movies, probably because they spend less time moralizing. And I agree with The Way We've Always Done It vs hey here's a different way -- though the downside, of course, is that you have some fans of the franchise complaining that it "didn't feel like Star Trek" to them. It depends on what an individual fan believes is fundamental to the Feel of Star Trek. If you want less action, more moralizing, Abrams' approach may be off-putting . . . but it also has the potential to create a new generation of fans, and the franchise needs that if it's to be viable in the future.

[wadam.livejournal.com]

And the advantage of it is that you have characters with ambition and room to grow -- which means you've given them personal goals -- and limited resources, influence, authority, with which to achieve them -- now you've created obstacles. They'll be inexperienced, they'll doubt themselves, they'll try for and sometimes achieve the impossible because they don't know it can't be done. In other words, this movie.

I'm not sure that this movie actually had those things. I know it's an alternate continuity, but it's pretty much predetermined that Kirk must become great, that Spock must become wise, that Scotty must be clever, etc. The problem with the idea of a re-launch is that it's very obviously melodrama: there isn't a lot of room for outcomes other than the ones you already know you'll find.

That said, I did very much like the movie. I agree that it's a ST universe that looks lived in (for the better), and I did like the interpersonal conflict between the crew, even when it was over the top. I'd like to see more ST done in this style; though I'd like to see some different creative teams and different interpretations going forward.

Can you imagine, say, Guillermo del Toro doing an ST movie? Or J. Michael Straczynski? Or Russell T. Davies for that matter?

It seems like the biggest innovation in this film is jettisoning Rick Berman.

[telepresence.livejournal.com]

I think they've set up an interesting space for Spock's development. I get the distinct feeling that Spock Prime was trying to nudge New Spock on a different path than his own, one that embraced his human side and going with his gut a bit more. Careful writing might also mine some interesting material from Spock/Uhura. I agree Kirk and the rest are probably relatively constrained by their overall expected destinies, but Spock bears some watching.

[jsbangs.wordpress.com (from livejournal.com)]

Yes yes yes, this is exactly how I feel about ST. I grew up as a marginal fan, watching lots of TNG and DS9, but very little after that. I was pretty bored with its central premise, and the reset seemed like just what the doctor ordered. I haven't seen it yet (I'm in Romania), but I'll hopefully get a chance to check it out when I get back into the country.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I expect it will be in theatres for a while. :-)

[(Anonymous)]

After reading all of the comments, as much as I want to respond to a lot of them I'll just respond to your original post.

I liked the movie. I loved that they basically rewrote the continuity from within the universe instead of just externally saying, "Hey we're doing it over so we're going to ignore previous continuity that would be restraining." With something as major as the destruction of Vulcan, I'd say that pretty much gives them carte blanche to do whatever the hell they want with the story and ignore previous continuity because, no Vulcan would directly and indirectly effect pretty much everything in the Star Trek universe.

I will echo what a lot of people have said, I would recommend watching DS9. It's final season is probably one of my favorites of any TV series. I will freely admit though that seasons 1 and 2 are kind of rough. I'm actually rewatching the series right now, and I've been thinking about making an "essential episode" list for seasons 1 & 2, that way anyone who's not a big Star Trek person and just wants to watch the important/good stuff can.

Most of the important episodes in season 1 are really just to establish character relationships, and some to establish the political situation of the station. In season 2 there more episodes that are important from a character perspective, as well as the first mentions of the Big Bad of the entire series. There are also some good stand alone episodes in season 2 that aren't necessarily super important character moments, or important for later meta plot reasons but just decent stand alone Star Trek episodes.

Although I'm still in season 2 on this time around, I think once you get to season 3 the bad episodes are few enough that you're safe to just watch entire seasons from then on.

Should I actually create such a list I will send it to you.


Tony

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

A list would be very handy, yes.