demagogue on 19/11/2008 at 23:19

---

Surely we can all agree that Star Trek the cartoon series was ace, though.


And don't call me Shirley.

Nameless Voice on 20/11/2008 at 01:10

---

That might just have been true for the later seasons of SG-1. It went downhill fast around Season 6.

I find it noteworthy that SG-1 had more impressive special effects despite being made years earlier. (e.g. an intimidating, solid stargate instead of that flimsy thing made of glowing plastic that they had in SG:A.)

Printer's Devil on 20/11/2008 at 01:36

---

According to the WTF (Worldwide Trekker Foundation), internet forum arguments about upcoming Star Trek movies are ineligible for inclusion into the archives if they are below twenty-five pages in length.

mol on 20/11/2008 at 06:36

---

To be honest, I don't get why arcing storylines would be something inherently better than single stories. Not that you exactly said that they were, but still.

The problem with arcing storylines is that with the possible exception of Babylon 5, so I read (never really watched it), the story arcs are never fleshed out in full when the series is commissioned, which means they are written as the show goes on. Made up on the fly, under the pressures of the production, and often by different writers with different ideas about in which direction to take the show (regardless of whatever series bibles they might have to help them with continuity etc), can even be constricting.

For the X-Files, the story arc worked in the first couple of seasons, and eventually turned into a horrible mess which clearly didn't know where it was going and how it was going to play out.

Galactica (the new one of course) was the same. Initially interesting, then increasingly wtf.

A series that's based on single episodes with only a loose arc, if any, often works better. Not that a good, solid story arc wouldn't be a good thing, but there's much to be said about independent episodes. There's also the added benefit of not being forced to watch every episode to stay clued in as to what's going on.

doctorfrog on 20/11/2008 at 08:55

---

DS9's arc worked very well, and I found that after the series found its legs, the arc helped along things like character depth and so forth.

TNG didn't arc very much, hardly at all. Ronald D. Moore, one of its head writers, and main brain behind the very good current BSG, is on record stating that they had fought with Paramount execs on instituting arcing episodes and actual character changes. I think they won only once in my memory: shortly after the Big Borg Battle in which Picard is used as a tool of the Borg to slaughter thousands of Starfleet peeps, the very next episode revolves Picard actually dealing with the emotional ramifications of the incident as he visits his home village in France.

That's the only real episodic arc in the show, unless you count Worf's search for honor in the Klingon empire (otherwise, he was beat up by the tough alien of the week). That's it. Other than a few recurring characters, each show is compartmentalized and each character is exactly the same as they had been before. You could practically play the episodes in any season in any order and hardly notice the difference.

That's a damn shame, since TNG had some interesting characters that could have used some depth if they were allowed to grow and change from episode to episode.

TNG will always occupy the warmest part of my heart, however. I grew up on that show. And yeah, I do realize my nerd flag is flapping. I was also a huge fan of B5 and am still pissed that they cancelled Farscape before it was really ready. If those horrible Stargates somehow siphoned off the funds the way they did the actors, that's basically like the college football team taking tuition money away from the rest of the university.