Blog rec: Wil Wheaton's ST:NG reviews
Saturday, January 19th, 2008 08:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
serai.
So, as you guys have probably already surmised, I'm an Star Trek: Original Series girl. Nothing beats the cool logic of Mr. Spock, the crusty quips of Dr. McCoy ("I'm a doctor, not a scriptwriter!"), the hot legs of Lieutenant Uhura, or the rampant Casanova complex of Captain Kirk. (Although those occasional love handles can put a damper on things.) Certainly Star Trek: The Next Generation, with its cardboard characters and rather grimly humorless PC stance (you can thank Gene Roddenberry's rather unrealistic vision of the future for that aspect of it), bores the pants off me most of the time. Just about the only episodes I ever liked were the ones that either linked back or were obvious rewrites of TOS episodes. I think the only NG episode that didn't hark back in one way or another that I really approved of was Family, in which Picard, Wesley, and Worf all had to deal with their families and the ramifications of time and choice. That had substance that wasn't either forced or self-consciously "tolerant"; its depth came from who the characters were at heart (imagine my surprise that they actually had them), not from what "ingenious" situations they were pushed into. (The quote marks come from the fact that there was very little ingeniousness in the series - the writers ans producers just thought they were being so. Big difference.)
But whether you liked the series as a whole or not, one thing that just about everybody agreed on was the character of Ensign Wesley Crusher. In a word, he was an annoying little dweeb. (Okay, that's three words, but you get the point.) This came mostly from the writers, who thought it would be cute to make one of the major characters a kid, and then didn't know what the hell to do with him. After all, you take an adolescent know-it-all, stick him in the middle of the workings of a military starship, and how's he gonna be anything but annoying? It took quite a while before they put any real effort into developing the guy out of his brattiness and dumb-ass mistakes; meanwhile, the audience had great fun throwing tomatoes at him.
The other problem was Wil Wheaton, who played Wesley. Not that he was a bad actor at all; Stand By Me proved he could be really wonderful and touching. But he didn't seem quite sure what to do with the guy, given that his lines were so dreadful and the character himself was such a giant hardoff. And he had a callow prettiness that worked against him, I always thought. I kept wondering why the hell he wasn't off chasing girls instead of whining at his mom or bugging Picard. (For those of you who don't know or don't care to remember, the Enterprise Mach MMXVIII supposedly had whole families on board, a fact that freaked Picard out in the first episode and then seemed to disappear from sight. Great, guys - what was the point of THAT?) It took Wheaton quite a while to find his balance in the role as well, and by then it was pretty much too late. Everyone had grown to love hating Wesley, so his efforts were kind of a moot point.
Anyway, for those of you given to a bit of day-before-yesterday nostalgia, I thought I'd point you to something pretty damn cool: Wil Wheaton's ST:NG review blog over at TV Squad. Every now and then, when he has the time and the inclination, he posts a detailed review of an episode. He started with the very first episode, and he's picking his way through the series chronologically, choosing episodes that he feels he has something to say about.
And what reviews they are! Wheaton's a very good blogger, as anyone who's read his personal blog knows. He's sharp, funny, and tempers his snarkiness with an accomplished story sense. Plus there's all that personal experience to draw on, as he includes in each review a section dedicated to his memories of filming the particular episode in question, so you get not only opinion, but information as well. This is the sort of thing that review columns should be about, and so seldom are - the complete experience of a piece of entertainment, not just an excuse for the critic to show off how speshul his views are.
This way to the Briefing Room!
If you take my advice, you'll start at the beginning and work your way up the list - there's a particular flavor to reading Wheaton's analysis of the show's development as a whole, as well as his thoughts on each individual episode. But any way you read it, it's a damn hoot.
ETA: Okay, looking back at the blog, I see that it's not exactly in chronological order, but the issue of series development still holds. As there seems to be no "previous page" button over there, I shall now give you a list of links to the blog entries as they were posted. Yes, I have no life. Wanna make something of it?
This list is from the start of the blog onward to the latest post:
9/8/06 - The Naked Now
10/10/06 - The Last Outpost
10/27/06 - Where No One Has Gone Before
11/14/06 - Lonely Among Us
12/5/06 - Justice
1/3/07 - Encounter at Farpoint - Series premiere, Part I
1/9/07 - Encounter at Farpoint - Series premiere, Part II
2/12/07 - The Battle
2/19/07 - Hide and Q (OK, I lied. The episodes with Q, played with great wit by John DeLancie, were pretty damn funny.)
5/8/07 - Haven
7/11/07 - The Big Goodbye
12/3/07 - Datalore
As I have no ST icon, instead I give you the next best thing - Lt. Tawny Madison's boobies!
So, as you guys have probably already surmised, I'm an Star Trek: Original Series girl. Nothing beats the cool logic of Mr. Spock, the crusty quips of Dr. McCoy ("I'm a doctor, not a scriptwriter!"), the hot legs of Lieutenant Uhura, or the rampant Casanova complex of Captain Kirk. (Although those occasional love handles can put a damper on things.) Certainly Star Trek: The Next Generation, with its cardboard characters and rather grimly humorless PC stance (you can thank Gene Roddenberry's rather unrealistic vision of the future for that aspect of it), bores the pants off me most of the time. Just about the only episodes I ever liked were the ones that either linked back or were obvious rewrites of TOS episodes. I think the only NG episode that didn't hark back in one way or another that I really approved of was Family, in which Picard, Wesley, and Worf all had to deal with their families and the ramifications of time and choice. That had substance that wasn't either forced or self-consciously "tolerant"; its depth came from who the characters were at heart (imagine my surprise that they actually had them), not from what "ingenious" situations they were pushed into. (The quote marks come from the fact that there was very little ingeniousness in the series - the writers ans producers just thought they were being so. Big difference.)
But whether you liked the series as a whole or not, one thing that just about everybody agreed on was the character of Ensign Wesley Crusher. In a word, he was an annoying little dweeb. (Okay, that's three words, but you get the point.) This came mostly from the writers, who thought it would be cute to make one of the major characters a kid, and then didn't know what the hell to do with him. After all, you take an adolescent know-it-all, stick him in the middle of the workings of a military starship, and how's he gonna be anything but annoying? It took quite a while before they put any real effort into developing the guy out of his brattiness and dumb-ass mistakes; meanwhile, the audience had great fun throwing tomatoes at him.
The other problem was Wil Wheaton, who played Wesley. Not that he was a bad actor at all; Stand By Me proved he could be really wonderful and touching. But he didn't seem quite sure what to do with the guy, given that his lines were so dreadful and the character himself was such a giant hardoff. And he had a callow prettiness that worked against him, I always thought. I kept wondering why the hell he wasn't off chasing girls instead of whining at his mom or bugging Picard. (For those of you who don't know or don't care to remember, the Enterprise Mach MMXVIII supposedly had whole families on board, a fact that freaked Picard out in the first episode and then seemed to disappear from sight. Great, guys - what was the point of THAT?) It took Wheaton quite a while to find his balance in the role as well, and by then it was pretty much too late. Everyone had grown to love hating Wesley, so his efforts were kind of a moot point.
Anyway, for those of you given to a bit of day-before-yesterday nostalgia, I thought I'd point you to something pretty damn cool: Wil Wheaton's ST:NG review blog over at TV Squad. Every now and then, when he has the time and the inclination, he posts a detailed review of an episode. He started with the very first episode, and he's picking his way through the series chronologically, choosing episodes that he feels he has something to say about.
And what reviews they are! Wheaton's a very good blogger, as anyone who's read his personal blog knows. He's sharp, funny, and tempers his snarkiness with an accomplished story sense. Plus there's all that personal experience to draw on, as he includes in each review a section dedicated to his memories of filming the particular episode in question, so you get not only opinion, but information as well. This is the sort of thing that review columns should be about, and so seldom are - the complete experience of a piece of entertainment, not just an excuse for the critic to show off how speshul his views are.
This way to the Briefing Room!
If you take my advice, you'll start at the beginning and work your way up the list - there's a particular flavor to reading Wheaton's analysis of the show's development as a whole, as well as his thoughts on each individual episode. But any way you read it, it's a damn hoot.
ETA: Okay, looking back at the blog, I see that it's not exactly in chronological order, but the issue of series development still holds. As there seems to be no "previous page" button over there, I shall now give you a list of links to the blog entries as they were posted. Yes, I have no life. Wanna make something of it?
This list is from the start of the blog onward to the latest post:
9/8/06 - The Naked Now
10/10/06 - The Last Outpost
10/27/06 - Where No One Has Gone Before
11/14/06 - Lonely Among Us
12/5/06 - Justice
1/3/07 - Encounter at Farpoint - Series premiere, Part I
1/9/07 - Encounter at Farpoint - Series premiere, Part II
2/12/07 - The Battle
2/19/07 - Hide and Q (OK, I lied. The episodes with Q, played with great wit by John DeLancie, were pretty damn funny.)
5/8/07 - Haven
7/11/07 - The Big Goodbye
12/3/07 - Datalore
As I have no ST icon, instead I give you the next best thing - Lt. Tawny Madison's boobies!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: Sunday, January 20th, 2008 05:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Sunday, January 20th, 2008 06:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Sunday, January 20th, 2008 08:53 am (UTC)I'm curious about JJ.Abrams' movie. Will it be as creepy as old ST films, excepting one or two of them?
no subject
Date: Sunday, January 20th, 2008 09:19 am (UTC)As to the movie, I don't know. I never found any of the older films creepy. There was the odd-even curse (all the films with odd numbers were terrible, and all the ones with even numbers were fine), but that's different, at least as I understand "creepy". I didn't like any of the NG movies at all, so a return to the original series characters can only be a good thing in my eyes!
no subject
Date: Sunday, January 20th, 2008 10:10 am (UTC)This is only my personal opinion, but they were lacking in the freshness of TV episodes, and I didn't like both scripts and directors. Maybe I'm to hard with those films, but I was disappointed for almost each release. The same for TNG movies.
Do you know Galaxy quest (1999)? Funny, ironic movie and not to miss for a ST fan.
no subject
Date: Sunday, January 20th, 2008 10:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Sunday, January 20th, 2008 11:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Sunday, January 20th, 2008 02:09 pm (UTC)ETA: The man, who was a bunch of wispy energy and then was a face and is now called "Portal," refuses to acknowledge the facts and the history of his culture, indicating that Neoconservatism has also survived until the 24th Century. One of the Ferengi hops up and tells the Portal exactly what he wants to hear, indicating that Fox News survived, as well.
LOL, I LOVE Wil Wheaton!
no subject
Date: Sunday, January 20th, 2008 09:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Monday, January 21st, 2008 01:02 am (UTC)Have you ever heard his rendering of Dickens' A Christmas Carol? I don't mean the movie he eventually made, but the full reading that he used to take on the road. It's marvelous.
I do remember the episode you mentioned. It was an interesting show, but my problem with it (as with so many of the episodes) was that it was not followed through as a real event in his life. After supposedly spending forty years on that planet, living a whole life of work and family, he just goes back to the ship and resumes his duties. That did not sit well with the writer in me, as it negated the enormous impact such a thing would have on a person. He simply wouldn't have been the same guy after that. It's one of those stories that seems like a good idea but is best not being told, at least if you're not willing to follow through on the ramifications of what you've created. It would have been an excellent story to tell about Jean-Luc if Stewart had been looking to leave the show, for example, but not in the middle of a series in which he expected to keep working.