Star Trek TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT - pre-Paramount+ TV Series

[sh9000]

Thread for all earlier Star Trek TV Series.

Edited June 24, 2022 by sh9000

[Tking22]

Well this works. I'm enjoying SNW and will be moving onto TOS after season 1 wraps up. Not sure if I'll be doing DS9 or TNG next, both seem to get quite a few recommendations. Maybe, someday, one day, I'll check out Discovery and Picard, Picard of course well after I wrap up TNG. 

[derex3592]

@Tking22 I honestly tried a few years back to watch the remastered TOS on Netflix just so I could say I've watched "ALL" Trek up to Discovery, but I just couldn't make it past the first few episodes, it's not the plots or the acting that kills me, it's those insane music and sound effects that are just so JARRING anytime anything happens! I will say the video quality and redone VFX shots were very very well done by the folks in charge.  TOS and TNG definitely got ALL the love and money thrown at them and left DS-9 and poor Voyager hung out to dry in the land of standard def 480i forever! Which is truly a crime IMHO especially in the case of DS9! 

 

Edited June 24, 2022 by derex3592

[Seto Kaiba]

TOS is a product of its time for both good and bad.

It's sooooo melodramatic at times, but that kind of camp and the terribly unsubtle musical cues and stings were the style at the time.

It is pretty fun to watch a young Bill Shatner embark on his five year mission to ensure no piece of scenery is left without his teeth-marks though.  Even more fun once you read a bit on it and realize how shoestring the whole affair was, and how much insane innovation and out-of-the-box thinking went into little stuff like props and set dressing.  (Or how bad the costumes were, between the ones that had to be held up with double stick tape and the ones that had to be replaced every few weeks because they couldn't be washed without also shrinking.)

[Tking22]

1 hour ago, derex3592 said:

@Tking22 I honestly tried a few years back to watch the remastered TOS on Netflix just so I could say I've watched "ALL" Trek up to Discovery, but I just couldn't make it past the first few episodes, it's not the plots or the acting that kills me, it's those insane music and sound effects that are just so JARRING anytime anything happens! I will say the video quality and redone VFX shots were very very well done by the folks in charge.  TOS and TNG definitely got ALL the love and money thrown at them and left DS-9 and poor Voyager hung out to dry in the land of standard def 480i forever! Which is truly a crime IMHO especially in the case of DS9! 

 

I had no idea TOS got remastered, I guess if I'm going to try to get through it it'll be that version! I have a high tolerance for camp, and really old-school sci-fi, so I think I should be able to make it, doubt I'll check out the Animated Series though. 

 

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

TOS is a product of its time for both good and bad.

It's sooooo melodramatic at times, but that kind of camp and the terribly unsubtle musical cues and stings were the style at the time.

It is pretty fun to watch a young Bill Shatner embark on his five year mission to ensure no piece of scenery is left without his teeth-marks though.  Even more fun once you read a bit on it and realize how shoestring the whole affair was, and how much insane innovation and out-of-the-box thinking went into little stuff like props and set dressing.  (Or how bad the costumes were, between the ones that had to be held up with double stick tape and the ones that had to be replaced every few weeks because they couldn't be washed without also shrinking.)

This is also why I'm interested in checking it out, a bit of morbid curiosity. I've read and heard about all of this, I gotta see it for myself at least once, it's such an important series that paved the way for so much that we enjoy today, I wanna see that old-school struggle and magic in action!

[Lolicon]

Upon watching all 79 original series episodes while researching for Star Trek II, Harve Bennett said that TOS was "one third great, one third mediocre, and one third awful" (the exact wording may be off).

I think he was being generous, but that's a pretty good summary of TOS. I like some episodes of TOS a lot, but I cannot think of 25 or so that I would consider "great" even if I count the "so bad they're good" episodes like Spock's Brain. 

[Seto Kaiba]

7 minutes ago, Tking22 said:

I had no idea TOS got remastered, I guess if I'm going to try to get through it it'll be that version! I have a high tolerance for camp, and really old-school sci-fi, so I think I should be able to make it, doubt I'll check out the Animated Series though. 

Oh, yeah.  TOS was the first one to get remastered.  At the time, they branded the remaster as "Star Trek 2.0".  They had first-generation camera negatives to work with for most of the footage and they did a pretty good job of it.  I remember when SpikeTV got it back when I was in college.

 

7 minutes ago, Tking22 said:

This is also why I'm interested in checking it out, a bit of morbid curiosity. I've read and heard about all of this, I gotta see it for myself at least once, it's such an important series that paved the way for so much that we enjoy today, I wanna see that old-school struggle and magic in action!

It has its moments, for sure.  Just not any of them in season three... those are bad moments.

It was the very epitome of "troubled production" thanks to a lot of outside circumstances including fights over creative control, executive meddling, disputes between actors, and the like.  

If you want the complete experience, you might wanna combine your watch of that with TAS since that was supposed to be the remainder of Enterprise's five year mission before Kirk's tenure ended and he got bumped upstairs prior to TMP.

[Dobber]

Also, IIRC, the command gold color is actually a greenish color. It just looked more yellow on screen. I thought I read somewhere that the alternate green top Kirk wore was the same color as the standard  gold/yellow uniform top just a different fabric that showed the true color better.

Chris

edit: yup. https://screenrant.com/star-trek-kirk-uniform-tos-original-series-green-yellow/ apparently DS9’s trial and tribblations officially retconned the green away.

Edited June 25, 2022 by Dobber

[Seto Kaiba]

My favorite TOS moment actually comes from the tell-all book The Making of Star Trek.  

When they were shooting "The Cage", apparently nobody told the film processing company that Vina-as-the-Orion-slave-girl was supposed to be green.  So they'd shoot that scene and send it out for processing, and the processor would dutifully correct "[the actress's] sh*tty green skin tones" in processing before sending the processed reels back.  The team at Desilu would promptly scratch their heads and wonder how the very-obviously-green Vina had come back with normal skin tones in the processed reels, and reshoot it with another, greener body paint.  This loop happened several times before someone thought to ask the processor what was going on and the poor man, practically in tears, explained that he had been furiously color-correcting Vina under the assumption that it was a lighting problem that was causing her to show up green.

[Dynaman]

1 hour ago, Tking22 said:

I had no idea TOS got remastered, I guess if I'm going to try to get through it it'll be that version!

It is blatantly obvious at times that it was remastered.  The FX don't quite match up with the original footage since it is obvious what was redone FX.  The cleaning up of the blemishes and remastered sound is all great though.  The one you HAVE to see in the remastered version is "The Doomsday Device" since they did an excellent job with that one, the redone FX make the episode's FX match up to the story in a way they could not pull off in the sixties.

[Sildani]

There was a solitary rumor last year that Paramount was re-mastering DS9, but to the best of my knowledge that went nowhere. 
 

By the way, it’s leaving Netflix in July, so now’s the time to see it if you don’t have, or want, Paramount +. 

[azrael]

5 hours ago, Sildani said:

There was a solitary rumor last year that Paramount was re-mastering DS9, but to the best of my knowledge that went nowhere.

I've heard the rumor too. And while I would love a remastered DS9 on Blu-ray, I'm not holding my breath. The RoI (Return of Investment) for DS9 and Voyager remasters are not as great as TOS or TNG (with TNG not earning as much as TOS).

[lechuck]

Saw these a while ago and since we now have a centralised ST thread, this is the perfect opportunity.

Some great fun and massive respect on the effort that was put into it. They also chose one of the greatest VOY episodes ever. 😄

 

 

[Seto Kaiba]

6 hours ago, Sildani said:

There was a solitary rumor last year that Paramount was re-mastering DS9, but to the best of my knowledge that went nowhere. 

If memory serves, that rumor started because they did remaster selected scenes from Deep Space Nine for the What We Left Behind special that came out back in 2018.

Originally the plan was to remaster all the older Star Trek shows in that manner.  The official word at the time was that plans for "DS9 2.0" and "VOY 2.0" were put on indefinite hold after the "TNG 2.0" remaster was less enthusiastically received than expected.

[sh9000]

 

[mechaninac]

For those who may be interested...

https://startrek.tomy.com

[Tking22]

On 6/24/2022 at 5:09 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

If you want the complete experience, you might wanna combine your watch of that with TAS since that was supposed to be the remainder of Enterprise's five year mission before Kirk's tenure ended and he got bumped upstairs prior to TMP.

I had no idea the animated series was canon, let alone the continued continuity of TOS, guess I'll have to check that out too. Seems nearly everything Trek, the various movies included, is on Paramount+, pretty nice having almost everything on one streaming service for once.

 

On 6/24/2022 at 6:33 PM, Dynaman said:

It is blatantly obvious at times that it was remastered.  The FX don't quite match up with the original footage since it is obvious what was redone FX.  The cleaning up of the blemishes and remastered sound is all great though.  The one you HAVE to see in the remastered version is "The Doomsday Device" since they did an excellent job with that one, the redone FX make the episode's FX match up to the story in a way they could not pull off in the sixties.

I'm nine episodes in to season 1 of TOS and it's pretty fun, the remaster does have some solid effects. Loving the updated sound, I recently updated to an Atmos system and all of this Trek stuff on Paramount+ looks and sounds fantastic.

[sh9000]

 

[Seto Kaiba]

7 minutes ago, Tking22 said:

I had no idea the animated series was canon, let alone the continued continuity of TOS, guess I'll have to check that out too.

For the longest time, it wasn't.

Gene Roddenberry was unhappy with how Star Trek: the Animated series turned out and declared it non-canonical in the runup to Star Trek: the Motion Picture in the late 70's.  Few of Gene's increasingly vitriolic declarations were taken seriously by Paramount, with only three really carrying any weight:

• Star Trek licensed works are non-canonical.
• Star Trek: the Animated Series is non-canonical and not to be referenced.
• Star Trek V: the Final Frontier is at-best apocryphal and is not to be referenced.

The first and third rules on that list have been adhered to religiously, but the second started losing ground shortly after Gene was ousted and kicked upstairs.  After his passing, writers started gradually slipping references to TAS into mainstream Star Trek and increasing amounts of references in licensed works (esp. the Starfleet Corps of Engineers novel series).  Their token insistence that TAS was non-canon lasted until 2006, when Paramount publicly reversed itself and reinstated TAS into the canon shortly before the series was re-released on DVD.

So now it's kind of back to being the final two years of Kirk's five year mission... and, semi-officially, a big part of the reason that Starfleet suspected Kirk was trolling them and making things up with some of the reports they received from him.  Lower Decks seems to take particular delight in referencing TAS's campier moments, but nods to TAS have shown up in DS9, ENT, the "Star Trek 2.0" remaster, and Discovery so far.

 

 

7 minutes ago, Tking22 said:

I'm nine episodes in to season 1 of TOS and it's pretty fun, the remaster does have some solid effects. Loving the updated sound, I recently updated to an Atmos system and all of this Trek stuff on Paramount+ looks and sounds fantastic.

The remaster was very much a labor of love.  They did a fantastic job of it, IMO.

[sh9000]

 

[Lexomatic]

17 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The first [TAS] and third [ST5] rules on that list have been adhered to religiously

Well, actually ... as of SNW episode 7, there's a character from ST5 who's been re-introduced, that being ...

Spoiler

Spock's half-brother Sybok (currently at a Vulcan logic-rehabilitation prison under the alias Xaverius).

... which is at least thematically consistent with the show's emphasis on "let's reinvent Spock and T'Pring's relationship." I'm waiting to see if they somehow insert Sarek and Amanda so that Pike knows all about Spock's family, even if Kirk doesn't; evidently Spock gets more circumspect between these two Enterprise tours.

[sh9000]

 

[Seto Kaiba]

5 hours ago, Lexomatic said:

Well, actually ... as of SNW episode 7, there's a character from ST5 who's been re-introduced, that being ...

  Hide contents

Spock's half-brother Sybok (currently at a Vulcan logic-rehabilitation prison under the alias Xaverius).

... which is at least thematically consistent with the show's emphasis on "let's reinvent Spock and T'Pring's relationship." I'm waiting to see if they somehow insert Sarek and Amanda so that Pike knows all about Spock's family, even if Kirk doesn't; evidently Spock gets more circumspect between these two Enterprise tours.

*whistles*

Now that's an extra-risky move, considering the fanbase's general opinion of Star Trek V: the Final Frontier closely mirror's Roddenberry's.  He had a lock on the uncoveted status of the TOS era's most loathed character before his adopted sister Michael Burnham was introduced in Star Trek: Discovery.

Then again, I guess I shouldn't be surprised.  Strange New Worlds seems to be on a five year mission to make as many references to previous Star Trek titles as possible... to the extent that I'm almost tempted to suggest they change the title to Strange Old Worlds.  Still light years better than previous attempts at new Trek tho, which is damned by the very faintest praise possible.

[sh9000]

 

[Tking22]

I'm a sixteen episodes in to TOS and I'm enjoying it so far. As mentioned above it's really melodramatic, everything is overacted, and yes, Shatner is certainly something else. but it's pretty fun overall. I'm definitely noticing some of the inconsistencies between episodes, mostly uniforms and props, binging episodes makes those things more noticeable. 

Question about uniform colors, are those dependent at all on rank or position? I ask because I've always known Spock to wear blue, but he's definitely rocking yellow in several episodes. I thought the gold arm band bits signified rank, I always thought uniform color was more open, you can wear whatever. But I also know most red-shirts are lower ranking, but there's generic crewmen that die off in other colors as well, Scotty usually rocks red but I thought he was a bit higher up in rank and had a more important position among those in engineering at least.

Also, this may be one of those episode to episode consistency issues, is there a standard uniform? I know the first two episodes with Pike were technically pilots, and I read that TOS doesn't really start proper until the episode Where No Man Has Gone Before, but I've seen the uniforms switch style several times. At one point they had the deeper v-neck shirts with the black undershirt, with the more decorative gold rank banks, but then they've also had the more turtle-neck looking shirts with the solid gold rank bands on the arms, then they eventually settle in to the looser colored shirts with the black undershirt. They don't have seasonal uniforms right? They're in space, going planet to planet, that wouldn't make sense. McCoy starts settling in to short sleeve uniform shirts, which I had no idea were even a thing, I don't see anyone else wearing those, or maybe I didn't notice, can you just request short sleeve uniforms? 

Either way like I said I'm enjoying it, I burnt through several episodes while I built my giant, absurdly sized Playmobil Enterprise, the show has lots of little old-school "sci-fi" sounds in it that are built into the Playmobil ship, pretty neat. I do get it with the sounds though, they come often and loud, everything has to make a little sound or something, it's pretty funny. 

[azrael]

1 hour ago, Tking22 said:

Question about uniform colors, are those dependent at all on rank or position? I ask because I've always known Spock to wear blue, but he's definitely rocking yellow in several episodes. I thought the gold arm band bits signified rank, I always thought uniform color was more open, you can wear whatever. But I also know most red-shirts are lower ranking, but there's generic crewmen that die off in other colors as well, Scotty usually rocks red but I thought he was a bit higher up in rank and had a more important position among those in engineering at least.

Uniform colors denote department. In the TOS era, Gold = Command, Red = Operations, Blue = Sciences. Rank is denoted by the bands at the cuff of the sleeves. There's a Memory Alpha article about it. In the pilot the colors were: Gold = Command, Bronze = Operations, Silver/Blue = Sciences.

Quote

Also, this may be one of those episode to episode consistency issues, is there a standard uniform? I know the first two episodes with Pike were technically pilots, and I read that TOS doesn't really start proper until the episode Where No Man Has Gone Before, but I've seen the uniforms switch style several times. At one point they had the deeper v-neck shirts with the black undershirt, with the more decorative gold rank banks, but then they've also had the more turtle-neck looking shirts with the solid gold rank bands on the arms, then they eventually settle in to the looser colored shirts with the black undershirt. They don't have seasonal uniforms right? They're in space, going planet to planet, that wouldn't make sense. McCoy starts settling in to short sleeve uniform shirts, which I had no idea were even a thing, I don't see anyone else wearing those, or maybe I didn't notice, can you just request short sleeve uniforms?

The standard uniform is the colored v-neck shirt over the black shirt/neckband. There's the dress uniform you'll see later. Women had the colored skirts. There's also a captain's green v-neck shirt/jacket. McCoy's short-sleeve shirt was like a medical scrubs uniform-variant. Same with Nurse Chapel's uniform (a medical skirt uniform). There are also the red workman's cover-all you see the Transporter room tech using.
 

Here's a quick version:

 

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, Tking22 said:

I'm a sixteen episodes in to TOS and I'm enjoying it so far. As mentioned above it's really melodramatic, everything is overacted, and yes, Shatner is certainly something else. but it's pretty fun overall. I'm definitely noticing some of the inconsistencies between episodes, mostly uniforms and props, binging episodes makes those things more noticeable. 

TOS understandably had some Early Installment Weirdness caused by the setting still being developed, some wardrobe issues, and some differences in creative vision between its principal creative leads.

 

1 hour ago, Tking22 said:

Question about uniform colors, are those dependent at all on rank or position? I ask because I've always known Spock to wear blue, but he's definitely rocking yellow in several episodes. I thought the gold arm band bits signified rank, I always thought uniform color was more open, you can wear whatever. But I also know most red-shirts are lower ranking, but there's generic crewmen that die off in other colors as well, Scotty usually rocks red but I thought he was a bit higher up in rank and had a more important position among those in engineering at least.

Sort of.  The uniform's color (or accent color on later shows) denotes the Starfleet service division the character belongs to.  The three main service divisions are the Command division, Operations Division, and Sciences Division.  Command division personnel are the ones on a career path towards starship or starbase command and other positions of similar authority.  Science division personnel are specialists in various fields of scientific research like the ship's medical staff, resident experts in things like linguistics, biology, chemistry, astrophysics, and the like.  Operations is basically everything else, covering the gamut of practical needs that make a ship work like engineering personnel, logistical support personnel, subject matter experts in various portions of starship operations, and the ship's security force.  

Prior to the 2350s, the Command division wore gold, the Science division wore blue, and the Operations division wore red.

After the 2350s, the Command division and Operations division switched colors so Command personnel wore red and Operations wore gold.

In TOS, the banding around the cuffs denotes rank and follows the same pattern used in US Navy officer uniforms.

There is some early installment weirdness involving certain characters belonging to other divisions.  It's also possible to switch between divisions, with later titles establishing that most Command personnel start out in other divisions to gain experience.  (Most notably, Worf transfers from the Operations division to Command division in DS9 when he joins the series, which is why he switches from a gold-trimmed uniform to a red-trimmed one after accepting a posting on the station.)

The TOS movies introduced a different color scheme for the undershirts that went with the "monster maroon" uniforms that had more variations for specific specialisms.

 

1 hour ago, Tking22 said:

Also, this may be one of those episode to episode consistency issues, is there a standard uniform? I know the first two episodes with Pike were technically pilots, and I read that TOS doesn't really start proper until the episode Where No Man Has Gone Before, but I've seen the uniforms switch style several times. At one point they had the deeper v-neck shirts with the black undershirt, with the more decorative gold rank banks, but then they've also had the more turtle-neck looking shirts with the solid gold rank bands on the arms, then they eventually settle in to the looser colored shirts with the black undershirt. They don't have seasonal uniforms right? They're in space, going planet to planet, that wouldn't make sense. McCoy starts settling in to short sleeve uniform shirts, which I had no idea were even a thing, I don't see anyone else wearing those, or maybe I didn't notice, can you just request short sleeve uniforms? 

Either way like I said I'm enjoying it, I burnt through several episodes while I built my giant, absurdly sized Playmobil Enterprise, the show has lots of little old-school "sci-fi" sounds in it that are built into the Playmobil ship, pretty neat. I do get it with the sounds though, they come often and loud, everything has to make a little sound or something, it's pretty funny. 

Nah, that's just early installment weirdness in play... they retooled the uniforms after the pilot.  Though Starfleet does change its uniform design fairly often in-universe, with several shows highlighting the introduction of new uniform styles like DS9 introducing the type used for much of its run and VOY's, First Contact introducing the uniform that became the standard for everyone except Voyager's crew thereafter, and Discovery's second season introducing a more TOS-like uniform to replace the much-maligned blue pajamas of that show's first season.

There are a bunch of minor uniform variants scattered about the series though.  Kirk has one dress uniform variant that's a double-breasted shirt in green, there was a short sleeved variant in TMP, the undershirt-less version of the maroons that showed up in flashbacks in TNG, the unisex "skant" from TNG, and a few others along the way.

[Mog]

1 hour ago, azrael said:

 

Here's a quick version:

 

Jadzia coming in hot with the jokes! 

[Seto Kaiba]

Even better from that episode is Worf's non-answer to the TOS Klingons.

"We do not talk about it."

[Dynaman]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Even better from that episode is Worf's non-answer to the TOS Klingons.

"We do not talk about it."

THAT was brilliant writing.

[sh9000]

I've never rewatched TOS but some of the episodes that I remember as a kid were The Cage, Charlie X, Arena, Space Seed, The City on the Edge of Forever, Mirror Mirror, The Trouble with Tribbles, Assignment:  Earth, and Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.

Just a few more favorite episodes of TNG season 1 and then onto the other seasons.

[sh9000]

 

[Seto Kaiba]

13 minutes ago, Dynaman said:

THAT was brilliant writing.

That and "Do they still sings songs about the Great Tribble Hunt?"

[derex3592]

That DS9 episode was and still is my like 2nd all-time favorite next to "In The Pale Moonlight".  

@sh9000 I always was a huge fan of the "messing with time" episodes of TNG especially! "We'll Always Have Paris" was a great one! 

[sh9000]

Yeah those were some of my favorites as well.  Also loved episodes focused on Data.