ST:TNG season 3, first 3 eps
Oct. 12th, 2010 12:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI keep getting distracted from the actual storytelling parts of this show by really random stuff. Starting, tonight, with the realisation that I could either lie there attempting sleep while hoping the painkillers would work rather a lot better, or I could get up and watch more Star Trek. But also the trivialities of aesthetics. Their helmet hair is kind of vaguely disturbing, like they could lift it off at night and keep it like lego pieces. I've read Wil Wheaton's blog so I know it was actually a more slime related experience, and that's not a helpful thing to be remembering while you try to watch. And then there's the lipstick color palette. I had not previously realised how very much you can date makeup schemes by decade, but that lipstick, it is not quite what you would find now. And to my eye it does not match anything, not the people or the uniforms. And I'd quite like to stop noticing now.
But the big thing is still me getting teenager flashbacks.
First ep of season 3 is Evolution, with a big focus on Wesley Crusher. He falls asleep doing an experiment and nearly wrecks the ship. Fun story, and all on standing sets. The bit I remembered though was the bit I sooooo empathised with when I was watching first time, a little bit younger than him: "I always get an A." Wearing yourself out trying for stuff you always get and don't actually value? Hello academic achievement. And the little speeches about one's own potential being the enemy and all that... I thought this was wisdom for the ages. This was me, on TV! The television understands, even if nobody else does! *hugs the TV*
... no, actually, I did have friends at the time, more or less. I just... over geek, sometimes.
The thing is though, rewatching it, on one level I'm right back there, boom, teenage and angsty and with all these expectations and god, remember when I was going to be a scientist? The smell of the labs returns with crystal clarity. 17 again. *shudders* You could not pay me enough. Seriously, believing in reincarnation as I do, the avoidance of ages 13 through 20 is a really good reason to stay alive a really long time.
... rewatching this stuff is a real rollercoaster, see.
But being this me, me right now, watching it again? Is my perspective ever shifted. I probably couldn't be mum to a 17 year old... oh I so don't want to do the maths on that one... but I look at that 17 year old and I just want to hand out advice and possibly cookies. I'm not identifying any more. That is loooooong past. And the last time I got an A? I was about Wesley's age. Probably younger. My grades went *boom* big time before I left high school.
So then I end up thinking about Wil Wheaton... a comparison I'm sure he'd be immensely flattered by :eyeroll: But he had this whole Achievement thing going on as a teenager, and then the wandering off and having a fraught relationship with that achievement and the plans that went with it, and then he sort of wandered back to achieving good stuff and doing good work and being cool with it all. Er, I don't just mean he's the coolest geek blogger, I mean he sounds like he's more in balance with the universe and having the fun life and stuff. So for me I used to really identify with Wes and kind of want to be him with the starship and all, but now I'm more able to connect with Wil, plus the wanting to be him with the writing and the making television and all. Though I do *not* aspire to act. Me on TV... oh very dear. I can't think of any script I couldn't make just that much worse... *shakes head* Okay, not the point.
The point is, I can't just watch these stories. I have to do this whole two track memory lane, then and now and the big disjointed bit in between.
It's weirdly exhausting. Though that could also be the feeling ill part.
So, anyway
Evolution was fun. New life and new civilisation... cause he left the lid off. Now that's how you want to end up in the history books.
'The Ensigns of Command' is more about Data. I likes. I only have a problem sometimes that these shows went in to my basic programming so the solutions are stuck in my 'of course' file. I can see how the characters have to start from trying to talk and work their way up to demonstrations, but of course a planet without phasers and that level of weaponry couldn't conceptualise the scale of destruction. I'm a SF person, so I can imagine how dropping a rock from orbit, possibly at near light speed, could wipe out the life forms before they can see the threat coming. But mostly people don't think about rocks falling out of the sky. It's kind of an offputting thought. They don't think about what weapons can do, so they think they can fight back. A little demonstration gives them some sense of scale.
... come to think, that leaves me a bit fearing for the future. It has been a while since humans did live demonstrations of their mass destruction capabilities. Which is of course a good thing, but how long will we remember the proper scale? Living memory only? How many ever really wrapped their minds around it anyway? Stories can get pretty important there.
'Survivors' took consequences off the chart. I was liking the little mystery of this one couple left on the whole planet, I liked how he'd refused to fight... and then at the end they drop that one act of destruction, how he was so powerful that a single grief stricken choice wiped out a whole sentient species. *shudders* Please we do not get that kind of power, or if we do that we have better control.
Actually come to think that loops back around to Evolution, and the experiment guy trying to kill all the new nanite intelligence. Right then humans did have the power to wipe a whole intelligent species out. And one of them quite plausibly tried it.
Humans is scary.
Sometimes I miss the days of trying to beat people over the head with rocks. You at least had to do it a few less people at a time. Though rock chucking technology, and the tactics to get the most people under the fewest rocks, did develop quite nastily.
Power=responsibility.
All the sorts of power. The sort that tries to talk people into things or deceives them or describes them only in the worst light as well as the sort with the boom sticks.
But the big thing is still me getting teenager flashbacks.
First ep of season 3 is Evolution, with a big focus on Wesley Crusher. He falls asleep doing an experiment and nearly wrecks the ship. Fun story, and all on standing sets. The bit I remembered though was the bit I sooooo empathised with when I was watching first time, a little bit younger than him: "I always get an A." Wearing yourself out trying for stuff you always get and don't actually value? Hello academic achievement. And the little speeches about one's own potential being the enemy and all that... I thought this was wisdom for the ages. This was me, on TV! The television understands, even if nobody else does! *hugs the TV*
... no, actually, I did have friends at the time, more or less. I just... over geek, sometimes.
The thing is though, rewatching it, on one level I'm right back there, boom, teenage and angsty and with all these expectations and god, remember when I was going to be a scientist? The smell of the labs returns with crystal clarity. 17 again. *shudders* You could not pay me enough. Seriously, believing in reincarnation as I do, the avoidance of ages 13 through 20 is a really good reason to stay alive a really long time.
... rewatching this stuff is a real rollercoaster, see.
But being this me, me right now, watching it again? Is my perspective ever shifted. I probably couldn't be mum to a 17 year old... oh I so don't want to do the maths on that one... but I look at that 17 year old and I just want to hand out advice and possibly cookies. I'm not identifying any more. That is loooooong past. And the last time I got an A? I was about Wesley's age. Probably younger. My grades went *boom* big time before I left high school.
So then I end up thinking about Wil Wheaton... a comparison I'm sure he'd be immensely flattered by :eyeroll: But he had this whole Achievement thing going on as a teenager, and then the wandering off and having a fraught relationship with that achievement and the plans that went with it, and then he sort of wandered back to achieving good stuff and doing good work and being cool with it all. Er, I don't just mean he's the coolest geek blogger, I mean he sounds like he's more in balance with the universe and having the fun life and stuff. So for me I used to really identify with Wes and kind of want to be him with the starship and all, but now I'm more able to connect with Wil, plus the wanting to be him with the writing and the making television and all. Though I do *not* aspire to act. Me on TV... oh very dear. I can't think of any script I couldn't make just that much worse... *shakes head* Okay, not the point.
The point is, I can't just watch these stories. I have to do this whole two track memory lane, then and now and the big disjointed bit in between.
It's weirdly exhausting. Though that could also be the feeling ill part.
So, anyway
Evolution was fun. New life and new civilisation... cause he left the lid off. Now that's how you want to end up in the history books.
'The Ensigns of Command' is more about Data. I likes. I only have a problem sometimes that these shows went in to my basic programming so the solutions are stuck in my 'of course' file. I can see how the characters have to start from trying to talk and work their way up to demonstrations, but of course a planet without phasers and that level of weaponry couldn't conceptualise the scale of destruction. I'm a SF person, so I can imagine how dropping a rock from orbit, possibly at near light speed, could wipe out the life forms before they can see the threat coming. But mostly people don't think about rocks falling out of the sky. It's kind of an offputting thought. They don't think about what weapons can do, so they think they can fight back. A little demonstration gives them some sense of scale.
... come to think, that leaves me a bit fearing for the future. It has been a while since humans did live demonstrations of their mass destruction capabilities. Which is of course a good thing, but how long will we remember the proper scale? Living memory only? How many ever really wrapped their minds around it anyway? Stories can get pretty important there.
'Survivors' took consequences off the chart. I was liking the little mystery of this one couple left on the whole planet, I liked how he'd refused to fight... and then at the end they drop that one act of destruction, how he was so powerful that a single grief stricken choice wiped out a whole sentient species. *shudders* Please we do not get that kind of power, or if we do that we have better control.
Actually come to think that loops back around to Evolution, and the experiment guy trying to kill all the new nanite intelligence. Right then humans did have the power to wipe a whole intelligent species out. And one of them quite plausibly tried it.
Humans is scary.
Sometimes I miss the days of trying to beat people over the head with rocks. You at least had to do it a few less people at a time. Though rock chucking technology, and the tactics to get the most people under the fewest rocks, did develop quite nastily.
Power=responsibility.
All the sorts of power. The sort that tries to talk people into things or deceives them or describes them only in the worst light as well as the sort with the boom sticks.