OVTNG Parallels

[Ahriman238]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/user/sfdebris?bl ... TaFBs9szLw[/youtube]

Ah Worf, Harry can't live down his weird sexual episodes, you can't live down seasons 1 and 2. I love how the Bat'leth trophy is a danger to anyone in the near vicinty while the Honorable Mention equivalent is hardly deadly at all. Also liked the starfish story, I'd not heard it before.

[Dominus Atheos]

It's actually ONGEG or Opinionated Next Gen Episode Guide. Also, working vid:

[Alferd Packer]

I don't know why, but this is one of my favorite TNG episodes. Maybe it's seeing what could have been, especially in the universe Worf winds up as XO under Riker.

[Terralthra]

Ah Worf, Harry can't live down his weird sexual episodes, you can't live down seasons 1 and 2. I love how the Bat'leth trophy is a danger to anyone in the near vicinty while the Honorable Mention equivalent is hardly deadly at all. Also liked the starfish story, I'd not heard it before.

Parallels was a Season 7 episode.

[Baffalo]

Ah Worf, Harry can't live down his weird sexual episodes, you can't live down seasons 1 and 2. I love how the Bat'leth trophy is a danger to anyone in the near vicinty while the Honorable Mention equivalent is hardly deadly at all. Also liked the starfish story, I'd not heard it before.

Parallels was a Season 7 episode.

I think he was making fun of Worf's antics in Season 1 and 2, and how he's matured as a character in the 7 years we've seen him.

[Ahriman238]

I think he was making fun of Worf's antics in Season 1 and 2, and how he's matured as a character in the 7 years we've seen him.

Correct. I dimly remember an interview where Michael Dorn said that before the writers really put together the hwole Klingon culture/bushido stuff he just tried to play the character as being really surly and perpetually angry. Hence why Chuck calls him 'WereWorf.'

Also, I was sure i'd finally figured the proper embed youtube video. How do you do it?

Does raise an interesting thought though. When the show began Worf was this really angry guy, Geordi was the blind man who flew the ship, Data was the robot who just wanted to be a real boy, Wesley was der Wunderkind, Picard was a self-righteous prick who hated children and had UST with Crusher, Troi was the woman with the miniskirt or low-cut uniform who always talked about other people's feelings, while Riker was just smug.

Seve years later, how much is really different (besides making the blind pilot a blind mechanic instead)?

[Baffalo]

I think he was making fun of Worf's antics in Season 1 and 2, and how he's matured as a character in the 7 years we've seen him.

Correct. I dimly remember an interview where Michael Dorn said that before the writers really put together the hwole Klingon culture/bushido stuff he just tried to play the character as being really surly and perpetually angry. Hence why Chuck calls him 'WereWorf.'

Also, I was sure i'd finally figured the proper embed youtube video. How do you do it?

Does raise an interesting thought though. When the show began Worf was this really angry guy, Geordi was the blind man who flew the ship, Data was the robot who just wanted to be a real boy, Wesley was der Wunderkind, Picard was a self-righteous prick who hated children and had UST with Crusher, Troi was the woman with the miniskirt or low-cut uniform who always talked about other people's feelings, while Riker was just smug.

Seve years later, how much is really different (besides making the blind pilot a blind mechanic instead)?

Any show that survives two seasons begins to grow. The first season is always rocky as it tries to find it's niche, looking for how the characters will shake down as actors get used to each other and hope they don't get cancelled before the show takes off. Second season, you start to see the show's stories streamline as the basic mechanics that the first season had to explain become fairly common, and you start to figure out where each character works their own particular magic. After that, the characters begin to become more and more complex as stories give them depth and we start to get a feel for how they'd act beyond the show. Think about any of the characters, like Worf, and imagine him going about his day, reacting to people around him and interacting with the other members of the crew. It's pretty easy, isn't it? Now imagine someone like say... Tasha Yar, who we only saw for a couple of seasons. It's a little harder, isn't it? We haven't had as much exposure to her, so it's harder to think about.

Worf is one of the best characters, in my mind, because he comes from a culture that we know about and understand, but he's not a Klingon anymore than he's a Human. I say this because Worf embraces a Klingon culture, but it's not what defines him, it's how he also demonstrates his human upbringing as well. There is a wonderful quote by Guinan to Worf's adopted parents, telling them that when Worf looks out the windows towards home, he doesn't look to the Klingon Empire, he looks to Earth and the home he had there. Not every story is going to evolve the character the same way, but even minor character developments add up over time.

[JME2]

I don't know why, but this is one of my favorite TNG episodes. Maybe it's seeing what could have been, especially in the universe Worf winds up as XO under Riker.

Or seeing the Bajorans enslave the Cardassians; a nice parallel touch.

[Skylon]

After this review I want to rewatch this episode just for some of the more subtle touches. I probably haven't seen it since the 90's. I certainly never caught little changes, like Data's eyes, or Geordi being a Lieutenant. When Chuck was mentioning the more subtle changes, I noticed the clip on screen showed the warp core looked a little different (the dilithium chamber specifically).

[Connor MacLeod]

to be honest, and probably a bit harsh, I want to blame alot of the problems in season 1 and 2 with Gene's vision. The guy had alot of good ideas, but I think he had a rather narrow vision of what STar Trek was supposed to be, and that created alot of hit and miss... Season 3 and Season 4 was really when Trek came into its own, and when you started getting some of the really good episodes (like BoBW of course..)

On the other hand, over time it feels like Trek went TOO far off Gene's vision, and it started going into some really absurd territory (the worst parts of Voyager and much of Enterprise being a good example of this.) Trek improved greatly once they were willing to move beyond the scope of Gene's vision, and experiment with different ideas (something that really came into its own with DS9 IMHO, even if people don't totally agree.) but I'm not sure how it can really BE Star Trek unless you keep it grounded somewhat in Gene's vision either.