Piter watches Star Trek

What have you been watching?

Piter watches Star Trek

Postby Piter Lauchy » Wed Aug 15, 2018 12:01 pm

Alright, so my first real contact with Star Trek was the 2009 movie and its sequel (which I thought were both fine, but not outstanding). I'm not a huge sci-fi fan so the series as a whole never interested me that much. That changed when the original series dropped to Netlix and I thought I'd check out what all the fuss was about. It took two attempts, but now I'm hooked. My plan is to watch everything Star Trek in chronological order of release and share my experience as a total newcomer to the series for two reasons (three if you count self-indulgence):

1. Fans of the series can relive their experiences from when they got into Star Trek, share their (spoiler-free) knowledge and generally just talk about it.
2. Other newcomers might get inspired to check out the series too and maybe watch it along with me.

I won't restrict myself to a classic review format; instead I'll give a short summary (with spoilers) of a given episode and then write down my thoughts about it. At this point, I've seen the first ten episodes. My memory for details sucks, so my thoughts on those are pretty vague. In the future, I'll try to post here right after watching an episode, so it's fresh in my mind. Let's start, shall we?

S1E1 - Pilot: The Cage
In the first episode, Captain Pike is imprisoned by telepathic aliens in a zoo-like environment. I forgot exactly why, but I think to study him? Anyway, we soon learn that there's another human, a woman, there who's strangely loyal to their captors. Attempts to rescue Pike from the outside prove to be fruitless because the aliens can project whatever pictures they want into the minds of the crew, so they think they're getting nowhere.
The aliens let Pike go after realising that a human's desire for freedom is sronger than any happy illusion they can give them and they'd want him to be content in their zoo. Stronger than almost any illusion anyway; the woman stays voluntarily because she's hideously disfigured and would rather live with the illusion of being pretty.

This first episode is actually my favourite one so far. I can't put my finger on why that is, but I think the aliens' otherworldliness is very well executed and in contrast to that, so is the insight into the human psyche. It's an interesting idea that out of all the species the aliens captured the human is the only one that would rather live in imperfect freedom than in a perfect illusion.
Pike himself seems to be a proto-Kirk; I haven't noticed any characteristics that would set them apart.
This episode is also the first instance where the show shows its age: The idea that a woman values her beauty above everything else is problematic, obviously. In a later episode this is even more blatant, but we'll get to that.
Overall, I think this episode sets up the Star Trek universe well. There's always this feeling of mystery that I've noticed throughout most of the episodes I've seen so far. There's attention to detail and a lot of care went into the whole thing.


I originally planned to write about all ten episodes I've seen in this post, but I'm spent right now. More will follow.
Feedback and discussion are welcome, obviously.
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Re: Piter watches Star Trek

Postby DoglovingJim » Sun Sep 09, 2018 11:10 am

Piter Lauchy wrote:Alright, so my first real contact with Star Trek was the 2009 movie and its sequel (which I thought were both fine, but not outstanding). I'm not a huge sci-fi fan so the series as a whole never interested me that much. That changed when the original series dropped to Netlix and I thought I'd check out what all the fuss was about. It took two attempts, but now I'm hooked. My plan is to watch everything Star Trek in chronological order of release and share my experience as a total newcomer to the series for two reasons (three if you count self-indulgence):

1. Fans of the series can relive their experiences from when they got into Star Trek, share their (spoiler-free) knowledge and generally just talk about it.
2. Other newcomers might get inspired to check out the series too and maybe watch it along with me.

I won't restrict myself to a classic review format; instead I'll give a short summary (with spoilers) of a given episode and then write down my thoughts about it. At this point, I've seen the first ten episodes. My memory for details sucks, so my thoughts on those are pretty vague. In the future, I'll try to post here right after watching an episode, so it's fresh in my mind. Let's start, shall we?

S1E1 - Pilot: The Cage
In the first episode, Captain Pike is imprisoned by telepathic aliens in a zoo-like environment. I forgot exactly why, but I think to study him? Anyway, we soon learn that there's another human, a woman, there who's strangely loyal to their captors. Attempts to rescue Pike from the outside prove to be fruitless because the aliens can project whatever pictures they want into the minds of the crew, so they think they're getting nowhere.
The aliens let Pike go after realising that a human's desire for freedom is sronger than any happy illusion they can give them and they'd want him to be content in their zoo. Stronger than almost any illusion anyway; the woman stays voluntarily because she's hideously disfigured and would rather live with the illusion of being pretty.

This first episode is actually my favourite one so far. I can't put my finger on why that is, but I think the aliens' otherworldliness is very well executed and in contrast to that, so is the insight into the human psyche. It's an interesting idea that out of all the species the aliens captured the human is the only one that would rather live in imperfect freedom than in a perfect illusion.
Pike himself seems to be a proto-Kirk; I haven't noticed any characteristics that would set them apart.
This episode is also the first instance where the show shows its age: The idea that a woman values her beauty above everything else is problematic, obviously. In a later episode this is even more blatant, but we'll get to that.
Overall, I think this episode sets up the Star Trek universe well. There's always this feeling of mystery that I've noticed throughout most of the episodes I've seen so far. There's attention to detail and a lot of care went into the whole thing.


I originally planned to write about all ten episodes I've seen in this post, but I'm spent right now. More will follow.
Feedback and discussion are welcome, obviously.


Any updates? What about the other 9 episodes?
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Re: Piter watches Star Trek

Postby NathanLoiselle » Sun Sep 09, 2018 11:13 pm

I actually enjoyed the remakes more than the originals. Except Wrath of Khan, Wrath of Khan was still better.
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Re: Piter watches Star Trek

Postby Piter Lauchy » Wed Nov 14, 2018 11:57 pm

DoglovingJim wrote:Any updates? What about the other 9 episodes?

I've been absent from the forum for a while. I'm not in a particular writing mood at the moment, but someday I'll continue this.
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The Oatmeal wrote:Live life passionately and love everyone like they are family, because Jesus is always with you. Jesus loves you seriously bigtime. He'd hug you until your eyeballs exploded out of your skull if he ever met you. He'd windsurf across oceans of dead Nazis which he personally slaughtered just to tell you that your new haircut is the bee's knees. [...]
Praise Jesus, especially when it's sunny outside because Jesus would totally be cool with you praising while you get a nice tan.
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Re: Piter watches Star Trek

Postby ghijkmnop » Thu Nov 15, 2018 3:20 am

Redacted
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