Meme: on a variety of topics
Dec. 4th, 2013 09:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pensnestToday's entry: Star Trek, including your favourite episode if you have one. From turps.
Star Trek. Ah, yes. My gateway drug, back in the early 1990s.
I was aware of the original series, of course. I expect I must have watched some episodes, though I was probably a bit young when they first came out. But it was Star Trek: The Next Generation that captured my heart. Yes, I watched most of Deep Space Nine (except the last couple of seasons, probably, as I have no memory of them) and enough of Voyager to know that I didn't like it, but ST:TNG, that was *my* Trek.
I'm not sure why it was that I started borrowing videos of episodes a friend's husband had taped from the telly, but I know that I started watching them after rehearsals. I'd get home all adrenalised from rehearsals and certainly unable to sleep, and watch a tapesworth—three or four episodes at once. An excellent way to establish and maintain an addiction…
I started watching somewhere in Season Three, I think. Went on to Four, possibly even Five, then back to One (oh, dear) and Two, and then Six, and was more or less contemporary with broadcasts when it got to Season Seven. However, it meant that my ur-characters were the ones who had been developed, rather than the ones who started out. Most importantly, my Data was a fully-made character when I grew to love him, rather than someone the writing team hadn't quite decided what to do with.
[Minor digression: I've learned, since discovering my Boy has Asperger's Syndrome, that a lot of AS people identify with Data. Which may explain why Data is My Kind Of Chap—the AS certainly comes from Beast's lineage, and he leans that way himself. There's a definite innocence to it that I find most appealing.]
At any rate, it was Data I fell in love with. I think it's a combination of good acting + My Sidekick Kink, ie, I couldn't fall in love with Picard (completely) because although Patrick Stewart is awesome, he's The Captain; and I couldn't fall in love with Riker because Jonathan Frakes was the All American Hero Type (a characterisation at its most hideous in Season One, of course, but vestigial for a very long time) and I don't care for those. No. Brent Spiner did a wonderful job, and Data was 3rd in the ship's hierarchy, and he was the innocent and the outsider. Perfect.
I described Star Trek as my 'gateway drug', and so it was. Once I was firmly addicted, I found myself sneaking out of the local book shop with Behind Star Trek volumes hidden in brown paper bags. I bought the magazines. I had, at one time, a dozen penfriends—all on paper—and subscribed to the excellent IDIC newsletter which came out several times a year and was always a good morning's read.
And I discovered fanfic. That feeling, after I read my first zine story—most fortunately, a really good Data backstory—that other people did this, too, and even better, that other people wrote their stories down, and then still other people read them, and I could do that, too!
So I did. I converted various of my longwinded internal ramblings about Data into actual stories, and sent them in to various zines, and they were published. It was very satisfying. (The Trek stories are here, in case anyone's interested.) I even produced my own Datazine, with a bunch of my favourite Data-writers. The icon to this post is derived from the front cover.
And then, in the mid-90s, we got online, mostly so that I could read more about Star Trek, and I discovered Compuserve discussions, and newsgroups, and a wider fannish realm (Callahan's!), and went to Media West, and got my first beta reader (the zine editors didn't do a lot—I don't think it's likely that my stories were actually perfect, but they were good enough). Email fangroups. Conventions—I went to my first con in Cardiff in 1996, and had some wonderful conversations, and several more after that. The best ever was Blackpool 1997, with Brent Spiner as the main guest, and practically all of my Dataphile friends there. Great stuff. I even published my own newsletter for zine readers, An Idiosyncratic Review, for several years. (It was this that ultimately led to my picking up a leaflet for Redemption, the Convention, and we all know where that led.)
Even after my love for ST:TNG faded away, I had found fandom and didn't want to be without it. And I'll always be hugely grateful to Trek for introducing me to this world.
There was a time when I could have named my favourite episodes, probably in descending order of awesomeness, but no longer. So I thought I'd haul out the ol' Guide and check what there was.
So, season by season:
Season One 1001001 The episode with the Binars, and Minuet, Riker's rather fabulous holodeck love interest. Actually engaging.
Season Two: Elementary, Dear Data and The Measure of a Man both provided a lot of Data development. EDD is more fun, TMoaM is more intelligent. Close call.
Season Three:
Ah, this is better. Deja Q was lovely, Yesterday's Enterprise worked amazingly well, Hollow Pursuits (Barclay!) and The Most Toys I very much enjoyed, and of course the season ended with probably the best episode ever, in which Picard is captured by the Borg. But my favourite of the season has to be The Offspring, in which Data creates a child, and things go wrong. I was always dissatisfied that Lal was never resurrected, or even referred to again.
Season Four: Well, Data learns to tap dance in Data's Day, and I thought that was a lot of fun, but my favourite episode was definitely Brothers, in which Lore turns up again, and also Dr Soong. I adore the opening of the episode, in which Data mindlessly takes over the ship! Also a nod to Family, the ep in which Picard makes progress on recovering from his Borg takeover. Which was a very good idea, even though it was a little disappointing as Trek.
Season Five: There were several very decent episodes in this season, but not enough Data focus to make me really happy. It has to be Time's Arrow, in which Data's head is discovered in artifacts from the 1800s, and Guinan acquires a past.
Season Six: probably the best of the lot in terms of overall quality. I do love A Fistful of Datas, even though it's properly speaking a Worf episode, because Brent has so much fun stuff to do; and Chain of Command (naked, tortured Picard), and Rascals, in which four of the ship's personnel become children, which I kinda envied them, a bit, and Ship in a Bottle, with more Moriarty, and Tapestry, but my heart was won by the amazing dream sequence Data has in Birthright, part 1. No need to watch part 2, it's all Klingons. Or most of the first part. Just the Data bits.
Season Seven, by contrast, selected a shoal of sharks to leap, most horribly in the appalling Masks. I did enjoy All Good Things, the final wrap-up, but it wasn't a patch on the final episode of Babylon 5. And then they perpetrated the films, which, ugh.
I feel all nostalgic now! If I had DVDs of the episodes, there are quite a few I'd be happy to watch again.
turps.Star Trek. Ah, yes. My gateway drug, back in the early 1990s.
I was aware of the original series, of course. I expect I must have watched some episodes, though I was probably a bit young when they first came out. But it was Star Trek: The Next Generation that captured my heart. Yes, I watched most of Deep Space Nine (except the last couple of seasons, probably, as I have no memory of them) and enough of Voyager to know that I didn't like it, but ST:TNG, that was *my* Trek.
I'm not sure why it was that I started borrowing videos of episodes a friend's husband had taped from the telly, but I know that I started watching them after rehearsals. I'd get home all adrenalised from rehearsals and certainly unable to sleep, and watch a tapesworth—three or four episodes at once. An excellent way to establish and maintain an addiction…
I started watching somewhere in Season Three, I think. Went on to Four, possibly even Five, then back to One (oh, dear) and Two, and then Six, and was more or less contemporary with broadcasts when it got to Season Seven. However, it meant that my ur-characters were the ones who had been developed, rather than the ones who started out. Most importantly, my Data was a fully-made character when I grew to love him, rather than someone the writing team hadn't quite decided what to do with.
[Minor digression: I've learned, since discovering my Boy has Asperger's Syndrome, that a lot of AS people identify with Data. Which may explain why Data is My Kind Of Chap—the AS certainly comes from Beast's lineage, and he leans that way himself. There's a definite innocence to it that I find most appealing.]
At any rate, it was Data I fell in love with. I think it's a combination of good acting + My Sidekick Kink, ie, I couldn't fall in love with Picard (completely) because although Patrick Stewart is awesome, he's The Captain; and I couldn't fall in love with Riker because Jonathan Frakes was the All American Hero Type (a characterisation at its most hideous in Season One, of course, but vestigial for a very long time) and I don't care for those. No. Brent Spiner did a wonderful job, and Data was 3rd in the ship's hierarchy, and he was the innocent and the outsider. Perfect.
I described Star Trek as my 'gateway drug', and so it was. Once I was firmly addicted, I found myself sneaking out of the local book shop with Behind Star Trek volumes hidden in brown paper bags. I bought the magazines. I had, at one time, a dozen penfriends—all on paper—and subscribed to the excellent IDIC newsletter which came out several times a year and was always a good morning's read.
And I discovered fanfic. That feeling, after I read my first zine story—most fortunately, a really good Data backstory—that other people did this, too, and even better, that other people wrote their stories down, and then still other people read them, and I could do that, too!
So I did. I converted various of my longwinded internal ramblings about Data into actual stories, and sent them in to various zines, and they were published. It was very satisfying. (The Trek stories are here, in case anyone's interested.) I even produced my own Datazine, with a bunch of my favourite Data-writers. The icon to this post is derived from the front cover.
And then, in the mid-90s, we got online, mostly so that I could read more about Star Trek, and I discovered Compuserve discussions, and newsgroups, and a wider fannish realm (Callahan's!), and went to Media West, and got my first beta reader (the zine editors didn't do a lot—I don't think it's likely that my stories were actually perfect, but they were good enough). Email fangroups. Conventions—I went to my first con in Cardiff in 1996, and had some wonderful conversations, and several more after that. The best ever was Blackpool 1997, with Brent Spiner as the main guest, and practically all of my Dataphile friends there. Great stuff. I even published my own newsletter for zine readers, An Idiosyncratic Review, for several years. (It was this that ultimately led to my picking up a leaflet for Redemption, the Convention, and we all know where that led.)
Even after my love for ST:TNG faded away, I had found fandom and didn't want to be without it. And I'll always be hugely grateful to Trek for introducing me to this world.
There was a time when I could have named my favourite episodes, probably in descending order of awesomeness, but no longer. So I thought I'd haul out the ol' Guide and check what there was.
So, season by season:
Season One 1001001 The episode with the Binars, and Minuet, Riker's rather fabulous holodeck love interest. Actually engaging.
Season Two: Elementary, Dear Data and The Measure of a Man both provided a lot of Data development. EDD is more fun, TMoaM is more intelligent. Close call.
Season Three:
Ah, this is better. Deja Q was lovely, Yesterday's Enterprise worked amazingly well, Hollow Pursuits (Barclay!) and The Most Toys I very much enjoyed, and of course the season ended with probably the best episode ever, in which Picard is captured by the Borg. But my favourite of the season has to be The Offspring, in which Data creates a child, and things go wrong. I was always dissatisfied that Lal was never resurrected, or even referred to again.
Season Four: Well, Data learns to tap dance in Data's Day, and I thought that was a lot of fun, but my favourite episode was definitely Brothers, in which Lore turns up again, and also Dr Soong. I adore the opening of the episode, in which Data mindlessly takes over the ship! Also a nod to Family, the ep in which Picard makes progress on recovering from his Borg takeover. Which was a very good idea, even though it was a little disappointing as Trek.
Season Five: There were several very decent episodes in this season, but not enough Data focus to make me really happy. It has to be Time's Arrow, in which Data's head is discovered in artifacts from the 1800s, and Guinan acquires a past.
Season Six: probably the best of the lot in terms of overall quality. I do love A Fistful of Datas, even though it's properly speaking a Worf episode, because Brent has so much fun stuff to do; and Chain of Command (naked, tortured Picard), and Rascals, in which four of the ship's personnel become children, which I kinda envied them, a bit, and Ship in a Bottle, with more Moriarty, and Tapestry, but my heart was won by the amazing dream sequence Data has in Birthright, part 1. No need to watch part 2, it's all Klingons. Or most of the first part. Just the Data bits.
Season Seven, by contrast, selected a shoal of sharks to leap, most horribly in the appalling Masks. I did enjoy All Good Things, the final wrap-up, but it wasn't a patch on the final episode of Babylon 5. And then they perpetrated the films, which, ugh.
I feel all nostalgic now! If I had DVDs of the episodes, there are quite a few I'd be happy to watch again.
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Date: 2013-12-05 12:50 am (UTC)I've read about the Asperger's/Data association in a few places. Very interesting as AI's have traditionally been portrayed as quite removed from humans but not really with such humanity in that isolation. And to think, people thought Star Trek had no real value initially.