Encounter at Farpoint<\/a>“<\/strong>: For some reason I happened upon this on Amazon and noted it was free to view for Prime subscribers. \u00a0So I threw it up there to see how it was (after not having watched it for a decade or more).<\/p>\nThe results were mixed. \u00a0My recollections of the first season of TNG being slow-paced, stolid, full of wonder about the universe and being happy and peaceful galactic campers were, apparently, correct. \u00a0If not for “Star Trek” on the label (in a period — 1987! — when there was a huge desire for same), this show would have died a deserved death.<\/p>\n
Which would have been a shame, because this two-part ep also does a hell of a job establishing the TNG cast and their nascent character drivers. \u00a0Compassionate and controlled Picard, ambitious but sort of snotty Riker, over-emotive Troi, flamebrand Worf, somewhat less believable flamebrand Yar, professional and aloof Crusher, geeky fanboy Wesley, VISOR-wearing LaForge …<\/p>\n
The directorial pacing on this premiere is horrifyingly slow (this same sort of story could be and was compressed down to a single ep in future TNG tales), and there’s so much desire to exposit, and to show off the new, fancy, glossy, whiz-bang Enterprise<\/em>\u00a0D that even the brightest shining moment of the episode — the introduction of John DeLancie’s “Q” — barely manages to hold interest.<\/p>\nFor all of that, Kay confessed she liked it better than she had expected (this being her first real exposure to TNG), and better than The Original Series. \u00a0So we’ll probably end up watching more over time. \u00a0TNG did have some remarkably good episodes over the years; the trick is moving through\/past all of the generic-to-crappy ones.<\/p>\n
(Weird technical note: the Amazon PPV version of this episode was missing an audio track, which meant that some music cues, and several audio FX, including background sounds, were missing. Which gave everything a slightly surreal sensation, both as explicit events like guns firing and Q (dis)appearing were silent, and the background hum and whoosh of the Enterprise<\/em> were completely gone, but the squeaking floors under the \u00a0characters as they walked around were quite audible. \u00a0Very odd.)<\/p>\nBig stack o’ stuff to watch for the rest of the week. \u00a0Wonder what Kitten will choose for her next item?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Margie’s off to Oracle World (or whatever they’re calling it these days), so Kay and I got to watch TV until our eyes bled. Well, we actually normally watch a fair amount of TV as it is, but Margie being out lets us indulge (and impose upon one another) things we might not throw up … Continue reading “Father\/Daughter TVpalooza: Night 1”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30420,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[43,23,360,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media-tv-doctor-who","category-parenting","category-media-tv-star-trek","category-media-tv"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/ST-TNG-Encounter-at-Farpoint.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":128137,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/09\/22\/the-universal-new-yorker-cartoon-caption.html","url_meta":{"origin":30412,"position":0},"title":"The Universal "New Yorker" Cartoon Caption","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 22-Sep-15 7:26pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Which, for a variety of personal reasons, is a hell of a lot funnier now than it would have been six months ago. A New Caption That Works for Every 'New Yorker' Cartoon And it's not \"Christ, what an asshole.\" View on Google+","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":129167,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/12\/17\/a-word-in-defense-of-the-awful-1978-doctor-strange-tv-movie.html","url_meta":{"origin":30412,"position":1},"title":"A Word in Defense of the Awful 1978 "Doctor Strange" TV Movie","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 17-Dec-15 10:22pm","format":false,"excerpt":"It's easy for Cracked to poke fun at Doctor Strange -- a TV movie that was not only terrible in its own right, but had the ill fortune to air opposite Roots, which means nobody watched it.But 1978 was in a huge dark ages for genre SF\/Fantasy TV. Seeing anything\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Strange.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Strange.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Strange.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":31131,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/11\/05\/are-we-there-yet.html","url_meta":{"origin":30412,"position":2},"title":"Are we there yet?","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 5-Nov-12 6:24am","format":false,"excerpt":"From today's XKCD (http:\/\/xkcd.com\/1130\/), \"Poll Watching\". (Hover caption: \"The choices we make Tuesday could have MASSIVE and PERMANENT effects on Nate Silver's blog!\")Google+: Reshared 1 times Google+: View post on Google+","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3452,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/11\/19\/less_with_moore.html","url_meta":{"origin":30412,"position":3},"title":"Less with Moore","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 19-Nov-02 6:44am","format":false,"excerpt":"Spinsanity has another fine skewering of Michael Moore and his film, Bowling for Columbine. Putting aside Moore's claim to be in it for the humor, the column points out the...","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":32847,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2013\/03\/22\/elvis-has-left-the-building-cosmic-edition.html","url_meta":{"origin":30412,"position":4},"title":"Elvis has left the building (cosmic edition)","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 22-Mar-13 10:12am","format":false,"excerpt":"Worth clicking through to the cartoon just to read the ToolTip caption. \u00a0(h\/t +Amy Shira Teitel)Reshared post from +Jason MajorLOL @ this. ;-)(Via\u00a0http:\/\/xkcd.com\/1189\/) View this post on Google+","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":17281,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2010\/05\/04\/unblogged-bits-tue-4-may-10-2000.html","url_meta":{"origin":30412,"position":5},"title":"Unblogged Bits (Tue. 4-May-10 2000)","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 4-May-10 6:00pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Links (most recent first) that caught my eye, but did not warrant full-blown blog entries .... Jim Hill : \"The Art of How to Train Your Dragon\" reveals the film that DreamWorks Animation almost made - Fascinating look at the creative changes that went into the movie (which is excellent).\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Animation \/ Cartoons"","block_context":{"text":"Animation \/ Cartoons","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/media-cartoons"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30412"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37349,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30412\/revisions\/37349"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Genesis-of-the-Daleks.jpg\" "\\"Genesis")
<\/a>