Opinionated Next Gen Episode Guide watches as a Klingon holds the ship ransom with the flimsiest looking weapon ever. At least put some tape on it before the barrel falls off.
I like the idea that "Kling" is an archaic term for something like the old Klingon empire from before they had space travel. Like referring to Britain as "Albion"
The Star Trek Encyclopedia noted: "At the time the episode was written, Kling was intended as the name of the Klingon Homeworld. Once the episode was filmed, it was realized that the name sounded pretty silly, so later scripts simply referred to 'the Homeworld,' and we now assume that Kling is a city or district."
My go to explanation for such inconsistencies regarding Klingons is that Klingons are very stupid and likely only got into space because Q felt like playing a prank on the gaaxy.
@@zephyr8072 Is Gaaxy Klingonese for Galaxy? If so, damn, Klingons must be evolving in a way similar to us. In fact, too similar... Can someone send the Enterprise to Kronos? I think there might have been a breach in the Prime Directive.
@@L1z43vr I take away that point because that explanation is ludicrous. Time travel is illegal? Okay, sure. And how do you enforce that without... time travel? And yes the Burn is absolutely something that no faction would want to maintain, especially not the time cops or Daniels' group. Hell, there's no reason Future Guy would want that either. Especially when the cause of it would be incredibly easy to prevent once determined. I suppose you could argue that since the multiverse is very real in Star Trek, all interference would just cause divergent timelines. In which case there's no need to introduce this idea of outlawing time travel.
@@KiltedCritic Transparent aluminum should be able to withstand a guy falling on it. It's the reason they can have space windows... it's supposed to be nearly as tough as the hull.
One of the few Season 1 TNG episodes I like and can rewatch. I can imagine how initial context was massively important for this one given how the Klingons were still just freshly made allies in this show.
While this episode is not great, it’s definitely a winner by season one standards. It gives Worf his origin, and a pretty good one at that, shows the relationship the federation has with Klingons, and demonstrates the changes that were between TOS and TNG.
Someday Chuck will be finished with TNG season 1 and 2. Of course, when that happens, people will probably start requesting him pick Picard and Discovery up again.
When you think about it, it’s actually kind of ironic that an episode involving the Klingons is also an episode where they show off that Jordy‘s visor can send video to a ship. It’s that very trick that allows a renegade group of clans to take down this very enterprise by using Jordy‘s visor
It looks silly now, but at age 12 I totally bought it. I imagined never seeing anything but a cacophony of sensor data, and it seemed shocking. I bought that it meant Geordi had a superpower with the huge downside of never really seeing just the visible spectrum.
"That is just a disproportionate response..." I think this episode demonstrates why I am not quite as gung-ho about the soundtrack for the early seasons as you are. The sound here says we're supposed to feel, I guess, a childlike wonder at what Geordi sees, but it feels forced because they failed to present a gloriously beautiful vision in line with Picard's "extraordinary!" When the soundtrack is putting this much emphasis on a scene that the set designers can't deliver on, it always felt patronizing to me (as a preteen watching this). The soundtrack generally always felt this way to some degree in the early seasons - like it was shouting, "feel tension!" or "feel the romance!" or "This is wacky and fun!" when the scenes being presented failed to live up to that sound. I dunno, maybe if I had been a bit younger I would have gone for it, it's hard to say. And let me mention, I had a deep affection for music from an early age, and - probably like most kids from the Indiana Jones & Star Wars era - took a lot of notice of how John Williams absolutely *made* the scenes he was writing for. But I was equally enamored of what James Horner did with WoK. Like to give you example of the lengths I went to, I couldn't afford to purchase much music as a kid, so I set up a tape recorder next to the VHS of WoK that we recorded from a TV broadcast, then I played the end credits and recorded myself a tape of just that piece. A low-fi TV broadcast, recorded on VHS, and THEN recorded on audio tape. Imagine the horror of the audio quality. But I did it, and listened to that track happily. I know TV composing wasn't to be compared with film composition back then, but I still think what Ron Jones wrote was just wrong for the series. Like maybe he was trying to go subtly cinematic with his sounds, but he just ended up sounding like the cheap carnival version of cinematic. Edit: I just found out Ron Jones did the composing for the first 12 seasons of Family Guy, and while I hate that show I can't argue that the soundtrack he did for them is GREAT. The music is almost the only good thing about Family Guy. It makes me wonder if he had been given a full orchestra for TNG if he would have handled it in a less hokey way, or if he had more control over his own work in that show, or if it just shows he matured as an artist.
Although some might think remasters are lazy, I've been enjoying these random videos popping up. Even though I've been following you for a while do you have a massive back catalogue. Even if I have seen them before, they still feel fresh because it's been so long.
It's not just a remaster, every now and then a shitton of his stuff gets taken down and he has to go play "whack-a-issue" and remove whatever the hell the bots are howling about this time.
"They must have seen the bill." LOLH. Great deadpan delivery. Your review of the episode is better and more entertaining than the actual episode. Really enjoy your ST reviews. Although I like Voyager better than you did, but I do see your points.
-Considering Season 1 doesn't seem to be your favorite because Picard is a hardass (especially around children) and Riker doesn't have his beard yet, 26 episodes would feel like 3,000. This doesn't surprise me. But, hearing you say it out loud definitely made me laugh! -I've recently started reading Patrick Stewart's memoir. I haven't gotten to his time on the Enterprise yet, but after reading about his father, I kinda wonder if he based first season's Picard after him. He was kind of described as a hardass - military-wise. -Ah, doohickey. Gotta love the coining of that word! -Were you already in this smartass mood before the review or did the review put you in it. Because I don't usually laugh this hard, less than five minutes into your reviews! I laugh, but not this hard, this early. -I bet the look at Data gave Riker about the "we" thing was an outtake by Spiner. There was just too much pause between the words and the reaction. Sometimes outtakes kept in just makes the scene that much sweeter!
It's interesting seeing this episode and then watching TNG slowly forget most of the stuff established in it about Worf and Klingons. I really liked their take that once someone is dead their body is just waste. That's at least an interesting take. Too bad later we get some Kingon talking about how they defended the body of their fallen comrade, or the whole Sword of Kahless worship in DS9. Or how we are being told flat out that Worf doesn't know Klingon stuff which will be slowly walked back bit by bit until he is the expert on Klingon culture and all that.
I think an issue with early TNG is that with most sci fi shows the main cast were the only crew on the ship, this means everyone always has a prominent job to do.The problem is the Enterprise has a crew of 1,000 so there'd be plenty of people available for things like away missions and operating the transformer.
This is one of those episodes that make me go, "Oh yeah, that's one of those... that I've seen" (well, since I've seen all of Next Gen, DS9 and Voyager, that's inevitable, though that doesn't make them all stick in the mind). It has almost nothing in it to make it memorable.
You gotta admire the sheer audacity of a couple guys who thought they could hijack the freaking ENTERPRISE and just fly away with it. That's kind of like if I just snuck onto Air Force One and beat up the pilot so I could use it to fly to Cancun whenever I wanted.
Let's be honest, with what we've seen of Starfleet over the years, you could probably take over a dozen ships at once using an empty staple gun and a few bottles of Diet Coke and mentos.
Tasha, Worf, and Tuvok being both the Chief Tactical Officer and the Chief of Security really irritates me. they should be two different posts manned by two different people. "Captain, I know we are in a ship to ship firefight, but let me leave my post on the bridge to go repel the boarders."
There's one TNG episode I look forward to for happy memories. The Arsenal Of Freedom. Is this because I'm a weapons nerd and clung to one of the only episodes that piqued my interest positively? Probably.
Who doesn't like being reminded of the _Lollipop?_ It's one of the two or three times we see that Riker has a thing for early twentieth century pop culture.
What's funny is that the scene with Picard's reaction almost feels out of character for the season 1 version of him. He's so generally grumpy and reserved in this era that even if he was impressed by this, he would keep his reaction fairly restrained. I mean a Captain being so distracted in wonder by what should be a fairly standard piece of technology to the point of negatively impacting the mission? It's like a scene with Archer that somehow time traveled and ended up in a TNG script.
Any other neuro divergent people see that part about "you just learn how to filter out unimportant voices in a crowd" and always wonder why you had issues with that?
This is weirdly the same trope as "Good kid falls in with a bad crowd because he thinks they're cool". Also, weirdly, the Klingon Empire seem to be on better terms with the Federation in this one. Such a lot of early installment weirdness
You can read this as in the earlier seasons that the Klingons have been focused on their conflict with the Romulans since Kitomar, and don't want to unduly antagonize the Federation. Duras and his house later threatens that balance with their secret Romulan connections.
I hate this episode. TNG ruined the Klingons. If you look at The Undiscoverd Country, it has Klingons quoting Shakespeare, with differing opinions and ideas, Chang acted laid back and confident, he didn't even tell his crew to fire on the Enterprise, he gestured then began reciting Shakespeare. But in early TNG the Klingons were turned into parodies. Kor in his one appearance in TOS was far more interesting than even Martok and Martok got far more time on screen and character development. The devolution of the Klingon culture to "War, honor, glory!" just killed anything interesting about them and this episode is where it started. The Klingons did get better as the writing got better and DS9 fixed some of the problems. Looking at the Klingons in these shows brings up the question of how are these people a power? How did they even get their technology? Based on what we've seen it seems that going into the sciences and not "war, honor, glory!" would be consider dishonorable. This is what a small backwards culture on an isolated planet should look like, not a major power. In my head cannon I imagine Klingon society as class based and the majority of Klingons we've seen are part of the warrior class or ruling class. The majority of Klingons that exist are a working class who go to school, learn science and engineering, build, maintain, and advance the technology they use. It's not supported by anything onscreen but it's the only way I can explain how a backwards people could be a major power.
@@christopherwall2121 The theory is based on TNG Klingons. It is me trying to take the TNG Klingons as presented and explaining how they could have the tech they have and be the power they are. Beyond that there is no on screen justification for it.
Which is amusing since it sounds as if TUC’s portrayal, produced when TNG was in its 4th or 5th season, was made in response to counter that portrayal.
@@myriadmediamusings I doubt that, I think they were just writing a good movie not a response to TNG. The plot of TUC is based on the (at the time) collapsing Soviet Union, Kingons and the cold war with them in TOS was based on the Soviet Union. It was different writers with different interpretations. In my opinion TUC just did Klongons better.
What's really funny about this comment is that General Chang was a Klingon who considered Earth to be the homeworld of the most dangerous potential foes to his people, and so he studied Earth culture -- particularly, it seems, the kind of high culture that people like James Kirk considered important enough to quote. Therefore, he spoke as though he understood human values and shared them. However, that was how we, the audience, interpreted his Shakespeare quotations. Beneath all of that, Chang was still exactly the kind of Klingon warrior who craved battle and glory. He only sounded more intelligent than, say, the High Council Klingons of TNG because he quoted material we humans consider highbrow, whereas the High Council types expressed themselves more directly. Chang was a charming liar, whereas Duras didn't have charm from a human cultural standpoint, and Martok was always straightforward.
Ooh, Imma go watch this right now. I'm not as bothered by season 1 as most, though I do agree that "Code of Honor" is a racist piece of trash, an opinion I've held since I first saw it in 1987 🤣😂🤣
I like the idea that "Kling" is an archaic term for something like the old Klingon empire from before they had space travel. Like referring to Britain as "Albion"
I like that explanation. Gives some depth to these Klingons wanting to return to the glory days.
The Star Trek Encyclopedia noted: "At the time the episode was written, Kling was intended as the name of the Klingon Homeworld. Once the episode was filmed, it was realized that the name sounded pretty silly, so later scripts simply referred to 'the Homeworld,' and we now assume that Kling is a city or district."
My go to explanation for such inconsistencies regarding Klingons is that Klingons are very stupid and likely only got into space because Q felt like playing a prank on the gaaxy.
@@zephyr8072 Is Gaaxy Klingonese for Galaxy? If so, damn, Klingons must be evolving in a way similar to us. In fact, too similar... Can someone send the Enterprise to Kronos? I think there might have been a breach in the Prime Directive.
@@L1z43vr I take away that point because that explanation is ludicrous.
Time travel is illegal? Okay, sure. And how do you enforce that without... time travel?
And yes the Burn is absolutely something that no faction would want to maintain, especially not the time cops or Daniels' group. Hell, there's no reason Future Guy would want that either.
Especially when the cause of it would be incredibly easy to prevent once determined.
I suppose you could argue that since the multiverse is very real in Star Trek, all interference would just cause divergent timelines. In which case there's no need to introduce this idea of outlawing time travel.
My biggest takeaway from this episode--Starfleet glass flooring is a safety hazard just waiting to happen.
Transparent aluminium.
@@KiltedCritic Transparent aluminum should be able to withstand a guy falling on it. It's the reason they can have space windows... it's supposed to be nearly as tough as the hull.
@@Swiftbow I know. Sadly writers/directors of the actual shows both don't know and don't get told this, so it's always treated like glass.
One of the few Season 1 TNG episodes I like and can rewatch. I can imagine how initial context was massively important for this one given how the Klingons were still just freshly made allies in this show.
While this episode is not great, it’s definitely a winner by season one standards. It gives Worf his origin, and a pretty good one at that, shows the relationship the federation has with Klingons, and demonstrates the changes that were between TOS and TNG.
I have not laughed out loud in years until i heard "f-u sir, f-u right in your stupid face"
Someday Chuck will be finished with TNG season 1 and 2. Of course, when that happens, people will probably start requesting him pick Picard and Discovery up again.
This was one of the first episodes of TNG I saw as a kid. Man the Klingons looked scary and alien to me!
When you think about it, it’s actually kind of ironic that an episode involving the Klingons is also an episode where they show off that Jordy‘s visor can send video to a ship.
It’s that very trick that allows a renegade group of clans to take down this very enterprise by using Jordy‘s visor
It looks silly now, but at age 12 I totally bought it. I imagined never seeing anything but a cacophony of sensor data, and it seemed shocking. I bought that it meant Geordi had a superpower with the huge downside of never really seeing just the visible spectrum.
TNG S1, colloquially known as "Chuck's Purgatory"
"That is just a disproportionate response..." I think this episode demonstrates why I am not quite as gung-ho about the soundtrack for the early seasons as you are. The sound here says we're supposed to feel, I guess, a childlike wonder at what Geordi sees, but it feels forced because they failed to present a gloriously beautiful vision in line with Picard's "extraordinary!" When the soundtrack is putting this much emphasis on a scene that the set designers can't deliver on, it always felt patronizing to me (as a preteen watching this). The soundtrack generally always felt this way to some degree in the early seasons - like it was shouting, "feel tension!" or "feel the romance!" or "This is wacky and fun!" when the scenes being presented failed to live up to that sound. I dunno, maybe if I had been a bit younger I would have gone for it, it's hard to say. And let me mention, I had a deep affection for music from an early age, and - probably like most kids from the Indiana Jones & Star Wars era - took a lot of notice of how John Williams absolutely *made* the scenes he was writing for. But I was equally enamored of what James Horner did with WoK. Like to give you example of the lengths I went to, I couldn't afford to purchase much music as a kid, so I set up a tape recorder next to the VHS of WoK that we recorded from a TV broadcast, then I played the end credits and recorded myself a tape of just that piece. A low-fi TV broadcast, recorded on VHS, and THEN recorded on audio tape. Imagine the horror of the audio quality. But I did it, and listened to that track happily. I know TV composing wasn't to be compared with film composition back then, but I still think what Ron Jones wrote was just wrong for the series. Like maybe he was trying to go subtly cinematic with his sounds, but he just ended up sounding like the cheap carnival version of cinematic.
Edit: I just found out Ron Jones did the composing for the first 12 seasons of Family Guy, and while I hate that show I can't argue that the soundtrack he did for them is GREAT. The music is almost the only good thing about Family Guy. It makes me wonder if he had been given a full orchestra for TNG if he would have handled it in a less hokey way, or if he had more control over his own work in that show, or if it just shows he matured as an artist.
Although some might think remasters are lazy, I've been enjoying these random videos popping up. Even though I've been following you for a while do you have a massive back catalogue. Even if I have seen them before, they still feel fresh because it's been so long.
It's not just a remaster, every now and then a shitton of his stuff gets taken down and he has to go play "whack-a-issue" and remove whatever the hell the bots are howling about this time.
Also the work of migrating platforms
"They must have seen the bill." LOLH. Great deadpan delivery. Your review of the episode is better and more entertaining than the actual episode. Really enjoy your ST reviews. Although I like Voyager better than you did, but I do see your points.
-Considering Season 1 doesn't seem to be your favorite because Picard is a hardass (especially around children) and Riker doesn't have his beard yet, 26 episodes would feel like 3,000. This doesn't surprise me. But, hearing you say it out loud definitely made me laugh!
-I've recently started reading Patrick Stewart's memoir. I haven't gotten to his time on the Enterprise yet, but after reading about his father, I kinda wonder if he based first season's Picard after him. He was kind of described as a hardass - military-wise.
-Ah, doohickey. Gotta love the coining of that word!
-Were you already in this smartass mood before the review or did the review put you in it. Because I don't usually laugh this hard, less than five minutes into your reviews! I laugh, but not this hard, this early.
-I bet the look at Data gave Riker about the "we" thing was an outtake by Spiner. There was just too much pause between the words and the reaction. Sometimes outtakes kept in just makes the scene that much sweeter!
1st series TNG really shows how much of it they were making it up on the fly.
It's interesting seeing this episode and then watching TNG slowly forget most of the stuff established in it about Worf and Klingons. I really liked their take that once someone is dead their body is just waste. That's at least an interesting take. Too bad later we get some Kingon talking about how they defended the body of their fallen comrade, or the whole Sword of Kahless worship in DS9. Or how we are being told flat out that Worf doesn't know Klingon stuff which will be slowly walked back bit by bit until he is the expert on Klingon culture and all that.
Still horrified at the naked (Beardless) Riker...
Its just wrong...
It seemed to me, that the optic thing was supposed to be a thing in future episodes, but was dropped.
Like the saucer separation...
both of which would only come back for Generations which would be where we'd see the last of them!
@@digitaljanus That did see use a few more times. Arsenal of Freedom and Best of Both Worlds come to mind.
I think an issue with early TNG is that with most sci fi shows the main cast were the only crew on the ship, this means everyone always has a prominent job to do.The problem is the Enterprise has a crew of 1,000 so there'd be plenty of people available for things like away missions and operating the transformer.
They have a total headcount of a thousand, most of which are family members. The actual crew compliment is somewhat lower than a thousand.
@@Jokie155 Still, even if 90% of occupancy is family, that's a crew of 100
Its weird how this was supposed to just represent the holdouts of the Klingons warrior past but they ended up being the model for modern Klingons.
This is one of those episodes that make me go, "Oh yeah, that's one of those... that I've seen" (well, since I've seen all of Next Gen, DS9 and Voyager, that's inevitable, though that doesn't make them all stick in the mind). It has almost nothing in it to make it memorable.
You gotta admire the sheer audacity of a couple guys who thought they could hijack the freaking ENTERPRISE and just fly away with it. That's kind of like if I just snuck onto Air Force One and beat up the pilot so I could use it to fly to Cancun whenever I wanted.
It helps that Starfleet has overburdened this vessel with the certainty that they're untouchable and generally have bad security.
Let's be honest, with what we've seen of Starfleet over the years, you could probably take over a dozen ships at once using an empty staple gun and a few bottles of Diet Coke and mentos.
Tasha, Worf, and Tuvok being both the Chief Tactical Officer and the Chief of Security really irritates me. they should be two different posts manned by two different people. "Captain, I know we are in a ship to ship firefight, but let me leave my post on the bridge to go repel the boarders."
It kind of astonishes me that they gave Worf an episode to flesh him out when he wasn't even part of the main cast, but not Tasha.
Geordi-vision reminds me of reptile-vision from Dinotopia.
There's one TNG episode I look forward to for happy memories. The Arsenal Of Freedom.
Is this because I'm a weapons nerd and clung to one of the only episodes that piqued my interest positively?
Probably.
For me it's because its featured heavily in the Reading Rainbow behind the scenes episode.
It's always nice to see Vincent Schiavelli pop up in something.
Who doesn't like being reminded of the _Lollipop?_
It's one of the two or three times we see that Riker has a thing for early twentieth century pop culture.
2019 was 4, almost 5, years ago.
What's funny is that the scene with Picard's reaction almost feels out of character for the season 1 version of him. He's so generally grumpy and reserved in this era that even if he was impressed by this, he would keep his reaction fairly restrained.
I mean a Captain being so distracted in wonder by what should be a fairly standard piece of technology to the point of negatively impacting the mission? It's like a scene with Archer that somehow time traveled and ended up in a TNG script.
I always thought that Jodie's Visor scenes where for character development and world building
It's hard for US to figure out if you've reviewed things before because you keep having to reupload everything!
Any other neuro divergent people see that part about "you just learn how to filter out unimportant voices in a crowd" and always wonder why you had issues with that?
If SfDebris had gone in order he would have been done by now I think. :D maybe? IDK whatever bring on the content I say! :D
he does each episode by request so a bit difficult for that
just came here to drop the c*mments, loikes and what not!
I think the guy Worf shot in engineering was committing suicide by cop.
This is weirdly the same trope as "Good kid falls in with a bad crowd because he thinks they're cool". Also, weirdly, the Klingon Empire seem to be on better terms with the Federation in this one. Such a lot of early installment weirdness
You can read this as in the earlier seasons that the Klingons have been focused on their conflict with the Romulans since Kitomar, and don't want to unduly antagonize the Federation. Duras and his house later threatens that balance with their secret Romulan connections.
If you really were dead, Sfdebris, you would be doing the same old reviews of Voyager over and over again .
Or the first two seasons of Enterprise.
Too bad a male crew member in a skirt uniform didn't defeat the Klingon. He could have then done the Halo death ritual of T bagging
I hate this episode. TNG ruined the Klingons. If you look at The Undiscoverd Country, it has Klingons quoting Shakespeare, with differing opinions and ideas, Chang acted laid back and confident, he didn't even tell his crew to fire on the Enterprise, he gestured then began reciting Shakespeare. But in early TNG the Klingons were turned into parodies. Kor in his one appearance in TOS was far more interesting than even Martok and Martok got far more time on screen and character development. The devolution of the Klingon culture to "War, honor, glory!" just killed anything interesting about them and this episode is where it started. The Klingons did get better as the writing got better and DS9 fixed some of the problems.
Looking at the Klingons in these shows brings up the question of how are these people a power? How did they even get their technology? Based on what we've seen it seems that going into the sciences and not "war, honor, glory!" would be consider dishonorable. This is what a small backwards culture on an isolated planet should look like, not a major power.
In my head cannon I imagine Klingon society as class based and the majority of Klingons we've seen are part of the warrior class or ruling class. The majority of Klingons that exist are a working class who go to school, learn science and engineering, build, maintain, and advance the technology they use. It's not supported by anything onscreen but it's the only way I can explain how a backwards people could be a major power.
Problem with this theory is that TNG had been on the air for like 5 years before _Star Trek VI_ came out.
@@christopherwall2121 The theory is based on TNG Klingons. It is me trying to take the TNG Klingons as presented and explaining how they could have the tech they have and be the power they are. Beyond that there is no on screen justification for it.
Which is amusing since it sounds as if TUC’s portrayal, produced when TNG was in its 4th or 5th season, was made in response to counter that portrayal.
@@myriadmediamusings I doubt that, I think they were just writing a good movie not a response to TNG. The plot of TUC is based on the (at the time) collapsing Soviet Union, Kingons and the cold war with them in TOS was based on the Soviet Union.
It was different writers with different interpretations. In my opinion TUC just did Klongons better.
What's really funny about this comment is that General Chang was a Klingon who considered Earth to be the homeworld of the most dangerous potential foes to his people, and so he studied Earth culture -- particularly, it seems, the kind of high culture that people like James Kirk considered important enough to quote. Therefore, he spoke as though he understood human values and shared them. However, that was how we, the audience, interpreted his Shakespeare quotations. Beneath all of that, Chang was still exactly the kind of Klingon warrior who craved battle and glory. He only sounded more intelligent than, say, the High Council Klingons of TNG because he quoted material we humans consider highbrow, whereas the High Council types expressed themselves more directly. Chang was a charming liar, whereas Duras didn't have charm from a human cultural standpoint, and Martok was always straightforward.
Ooh, Imma go watch this right now. I'm not as bothered by season 1 as most, though I do agree that "Code of Honor" is a racist piece of trash, an opinion I've held since I first saw it in 1987 🤣😂🤣
If it helps I know you haven’t done “well always have Paris”
That's how impactful that episode was--I forgot it existed until you just reminded me.