I'd be interested in a version of this for TNG as well. My wife recently expressed interest in running through TNG on Netflix, but there's several fairly bad episodes and a lot that are pretty tedious with little point. But I sampled a few of the ones I remembered as being good, and seen through eyes with 20 years more experience there's definitely more to them than I remember. So I'm not intrinsically against the idea, but I don't want to walk through the entire series.
For instance, we watched the episode where Picard is kidnapped by the Borg. As a teenager, my drama-IQ was not so low that I entirely missed the major storyline that Riker gets in that story about his career as he is challenged by the up-and-coming Shelby, but I certainly see it much more clearly and with far more nuance now.
The problem with TNG is that it didn't necessarily get better in linear fashion, the way one could argue that DS9 got better as it "found its voice" and established a continuous storyline. TNG has some high points and some clunkers in almost every season, though there are slightly more low points in the first two seasons. Having recently rewatched the run of the show, in chronological order, I'd guesstimate that 10% of the episodes are bad, 50% are decent, 20% are great, and 20% are spectacular. [1]
So something like this would be especially helpful for TNG, where a) there are a lot of episodes in total, and b) there are no useful rules of thumb or shorthand (such as "skip season X," or "it gets better beyond Y").
Now, the great news about TNG is that it's mostly episodic. Which means she can watch any episode, at random, and enjoy it as a self-contained story. (Aside from the two-parters.) TNG really lends itself to randomized viewing. DS9 needs to be watched in chronological order (at least for the first-time viewer). TNG can be watched in any order.
[1] Some people will find this assessment overly generous, and others will find it overly harsh. That's the beauty of Trek fandom; there's plenty of room for disagreement. :) Just about the only things TNG fans can agree on are that: 1) Riker with beard > Riker without beard; 2) "The Naked Now" is probably the series' worst episode, although it's enjoyable in a kitschy, ironic sort of way; 3) Wesley Crusher sucks (although Wil Wheaton himself is a pretty awesome guy).
By way of a friend-of-a-friend being one of the TNG writers, I was given a pretty cool explanation for what happened with Wesley. Upshot: It was the writers' strike.
What happened was this: The TNG team had regular meetings where the writers and producers got together and reviewed the state of the series - what kinds of scripts and stories they were looking for and what was in the pipeline and what sort of course corrections they wanted to see. At one such meeting the producers said "we've got this character Wesley but we haven't really DONE anything with him - the audience doesn't know much about him. We'd really like to see some stories that let us connect more with that character." Then the dozen writers all went home with that thought in mind: let's get to know Wesley! And how do you "get to know a character better" on a Trek show? Have him save the ship! So the following week, a dozen writers all submitted their own independent "Wesley saves the ship" scripts.
...and right after that the writers' strike happened and nobody could write any NEW scripts, so to keep the series going they had to film and show any decent scripts they already had handy, far too many of which (by pure chance) featured Wesley saving the ship. If they had had a choice, they would have filmed fewer of those scripts at all, sent a few back for rewrites, and staggered them out much farther apart between runs of episodes in which a little kid DOESN'T manage to make everyone else on the ship look stupid or redundant.
That is kind of hilarious and amazing. My understanding is that the writers' strike also accounts for the notorious clip-show episode "Shades of Grey" in Season 2, in which an entire plot is loosely constructed around Riker's "flashbacks" to footage from previous episodes -- made all the more jarring by the fact that it's only Season 2, and there haven't even been all that many clips to flash back to.
> The problem with TNG is that it didn't necessarily get better in linear fashion, the way one could argue that DS9 got better as it "found its voice" and established a continuous storyline. TNG has some high points and some clunkers in almost every season, though there are slightly more low points in the first two seasons.
Was he? I mean, in theory, he was definitely there to provide the pre/adolescent entry point into the show. So I get that. But I always hated him. When I was 12, he was kind of a minor annoyance. Data was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Riker completely puzzled me; I kept hearing about how cool he was supposed to be, and to me, he just seemed like kind of a dick. Worf was pretty cool. Geordi was ok, and he got a lot of good will for having been on Reading Rainbow. Troi was annoying, but 12-year-old me really appreciated her taste in spandex. Beverly Crusher was kind of boring. Picard was pretty cool.
As an adult, I still find Wesley annoying (if, ironically enough, less so). Data is still pretty awesome. Riker has grown on me in a way that I don't think I would have been capable of appreciating as an inexperienced kid. He is a nuanced character that you kind of have to have lived a little in order to get. My opinion on Worf is largely unchanged, though his stock benefitted retrospectively from his appearances on DS9. Geordi got better with the benefit of time. Troi still bugs me; I find her one-dimensional with only occasional chances to shine. (Probably not her fault. It seems that the writers just didn't know what to do with her, other than consign her to stereotypical, damsel-in-distress and love-interest tropes. Her mother, by contrast, is a fantastic character, if a bit of a lightning rod amongst fans.) Beverly Crusher grew on me a bit -- especially in contrast to Dr. Pulaski, whose odd, technophobic Data-bashing felt really out of place in the 24th Century. Picard went from being "pretty cool" to being, unquestionably, the best thing about the show.
Your post sums up why I'm interested in going back and seeing it again. As I said, I've only sampled a couple of episodes, and even in my brief dalliance there I can see what you're talking about in my second paragraph.
Thanks to everyone for the suggestions.
It seems to me that it is a general problem that a multi-writer show like Star Trek can only carry along certain types of nuance. I suspect there's a lot of writers that, given six or seven episodes to play with, could have done fantastic things with Worf or Troi... but that's not how it works. They also have problems with change... especially in the movies (which I do more clearly remember), they had a real problem with Data. By the time of the movies he'd made a lot of progress and grown a lot as a character, but in a couple of the movies (particularly Insurrection) it's like he's regressed almost all the way back to the first episode of TNG. The "Pinocchio" aspect of the story carried along, but the already-existing nuance had disappeared.
There are benefits and drawbacks to multi-writer teams. I say this as someone who spent the first half of his career in TV development and production. (In fact, I briefly interned on a Trek series back in college.)
One of the benefits is, for lack of a better word, scalability. A single writer would take forever to write 100+ cogent, consistently great, full-length episodes of a TV show. Since TV series' fates are always in flux, you can't afford a primetime series with only one writer, who becomes a crushing bottleneck if any changes in volume need to be made. Writing a great TV episode is hard, hard work and takes time. Now imagine writing 12, or even 22 of them on an insane production deadline!
On the other hand, some shows and formats work really well with a single writer/auteur. True Detective is famous for having been entirely written and entirely directed by just one writer and one director. Now, True Detective was a miniseries of only 8 episodes, and at that scale, a single writer is more realistic. I doubt you could have produced a primetime Star Trek series with only one writer and one director.
An interesting hybrid approach is what I'd call a staff structure with a clear "visionary" at the helm. This is sort of like what we saw on Battlestar Galactica: a show with a full writing staff, but one or two writers who basically dominated the process and authored the bulk of the series. MASH is another good example; Larry Gelbart clearly exercised strong, authorial control over the show, even though he didn't write every episode.
This latter approach tends to work the best, in my experience as a fan and as a former TV person. But it can have its difficulties and drawbacks, all the same. Sometimes there are limits to the imagination of even the most creative individuals. If you're relying too much on a strong auteur type, and he or she gets writer's block, or gets sick, or becomes extremely difficult, you're SOL.
> especially in contrast to Dr. Pulaski, whose odd, technophobic Data-bashing felt really out of place in the 24th Century.
I fancy that this was to offer a bit of continuity with McCoy's fear of Transporters.
I do agree that it felt out of place, but having given it a bit more thought: The fact that Data was unique (ignoring the as-yet unheard of Lore) sort of makes everyone else's easy acceptance of him slightly odd. The doctor (with intimate knowledge of the fact that we're all just very complicated machines) should have been Data's lone champion against his numerous naysayers.
Right? Especially because she was a woman of science. Pulaski should have marveled at the technical accomplishment Data was, even if she retained some healthy skepticism of his apparent humanity. Instead, she took the "tin man" approach, and from an almost Cartesian, animist sense, seemed to dislike him because he didn't have some sort of metaphysical spark of life. I can see that sort of attitude coming from some, but coming from the science-minded doctor, it was odd. Especially because everyone else was just so unconditionally cool with it all.
> especially in contrast to Dr. Pulaski, whose odd, technophobic Data-bashing felt really out of place in the 24th Century
I didn't care for Pulaski, but I kind of get her character, in retrospect. In comparison to Crusher, who was the motherly, caring doctor that we all wish we had, Pulaski was the doctor who was in it for the science. She never really seemed friendly, she wasn't especially caring, and she didn't mind if people disliked her, but she was good at the medicine and the science.
I actually really enjoyed Dr. Pulaski, but I'm pretty aware I'm in a small group on that one. She was just so damn surly, which I thought brought a nice contrast to the rest of the cast.
I guess I have mixed feelings about her. She was definitely a character, and I give her credit for that. She was not out to win a popularity contest, or to be Miss Congeniality. She was gruff, old fashioned, and smart. Sort of like McCoy, but without the charm. But I just didn't buy her Luddite tendencies. Her treatment of Data bordered on cruel, even if I understand that sometimes she was doing it to make a point, or to test him in certain ways. But I just didn't get where it came from. It felt odd. And I know this isn't necessarily fair to Pulaski, but seeing as how Data is so gosh-darned lovable, her antagonism towards him makes her unlovable by association. It's like having a character whose defining traits include being mean to puppies. It's just...hard to win people over if you're going to be that person.
She's grown on me over the years. She's definitely a more interesting person than Dr. Crusher, but I think she was also too much of an homage to Bones from TOS.
I recently went back and watched some TOS and was really surprised to see young her on the show.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I love watching the episode. I also love watching movies like "The Room." To me, "The Naked Now" is "The Room" of TNG episodes. It's a fascinating trainwreck with some hilarious scenes ("Fully functional" being the best, obviously).
What fascinates me is that "Naked Now" was only the second episode of the entire series! It's as if the writers just got together and said, "You know what? Fuck the shark; let's just jump it right out of the gate and get it over with." Or, "Sooner or later, some fanfic weirdos are going to launch a heated debate about whether Data can have sex. Let's address that question preemptively, sparing everyone the flame war."
I rewatched ds9 for the nth time watching only the "engage" episodes on the list, and I felt it hit all the necessary plot and high points. For some it might be better since they might otherwise get turned off by weak episodes early in the series.
Before we'd started dating, my (now) wife and I sat down to watch TNG, start to finish. We resolved to watch every episode, rather than hopping our way through it.
Until we got to the end of the second season, that was fine. Some of the episodes were bad, but not unforgivably bad. Except for the Riker 'clip show' episode. It was awful, and we hopped on out after only a few minutes to move on to Season 3. The series got significantly better at that point, and pretty much every episode after that is watchable (if not 'worth watching').
Call to Arms of course. This is the series where we actually saw the Federation go to war (on-screen).
All the episodes revolving around Sisko as Emissary as well. Impressive writing given the religious and philosophical contexts involved. It went over a lot of peoples' head if they didn't follow the series since the pilot.
I know this is not a popular opinion but this is my favorite Star Trek series, followed by TNG.
It's hard because the shows both have their own merits. TNG easily had the best cast of any Trek show, but the show is limited by being allergic to continuity and the uniformity of its all-military characters.
DS9's writing wasn't really any better than TNG - there were some great episodes and many forgettable bits of filler. But DS9, in spite of its static setting, had more room to grow thanks to being willing to let the story change and develop, plus having a large cast of recurring characters outside of Starfleet/Bajoran military. The characters that made the show great were Winn and Garak and Ducat and Wayoun and Quark - a stellar cast of recurring villains and peripheral characters.
The problem is that the show tried to tries to force a Kirk/Spock relationship between Sisko and Dax when they're just plain bad actors. It's a shame since the show was really built around them. Avery Brooks tries to sound intense but he comes off just being a bad ham, and Terry Farrell tries to sound serene but ends up just being wooden.
That and I'll never forgive the show for making me hate Worf. Seriously, DS9 Worf is a jerk.
Avery Brooks can ham it up like nobody's business. When he's bad, he's really bad. Like, when he starts making strange, high-pitched sounds and squeals, or bursts into theatrical outrage. But when he's good, he's pretty damned good. Sisko is a conflicted, tormented character. I think you need to see Brooks's performance in that light. He is not the classic do-gooder, overachiever, always-makes-the-right-call Starfleet captain you see in every other Trek series. He is often wrong. He is not on a fast track. He is not getting various maneuvers named after him, or making the textbooks and history books in real time. When the series starts, he's a broken and bitter man assigned to a career-killing backwater post. That post happens to become strategically important, and he's forced to rise to the challenge. But he's still got all of that baggage to deal with, and he still has his flaws. To make matters worse, he finds himself the unwitting messiah figure to an entire race of alien people. He didn't ask for any of this. But he steps up, slowly and clumsily at times, and finds himself again. I think Sisko is one of the more nuanced characters Trek has ever given us, and if you can look past Avery Brooks's hammy tendencies, you can see a lot of merit in both the actor and the character. Brooks's acting is at its best when Sisko's not at one or the other extreme end of the emotional spectrum. When Sisko's at about a 4 to an 8, Brooks is superb. When Sisko's in the 1-3 or 9-10 ranges, look out, here comes the ham.
Dax as Spock? I think things started out that way, or perhaps were initially intended to be that way. But she was pretty un-Spocklike for most of the series. Farrell was not a world-class actor by any means. But her performance kind of got better as it went along, and as the writers gave Dax more to work with. And she was a lot better than Ezri Dax by a wide mile. (Not that that's saying much.)
DS9 Worf is a controversial figure. I loved his post-Dax arc. He rose to the occasion and became a true hero. Perhaps my biggest issue with Worf in DS9 is that the show pretty much forgets all of what happened in TNG, and forgets that Worf is half human. It's as if they recast him as 100% Klingon, rewiring all of his backstory and his personality traits accordingly. You get none of the "Which world do I really belong to?" drama that made him interesting in TNG. Instead, he's Alpha Klingon Badass all of the time. It's ironic, because DS9 is the one Trek series that (in my opinion) fleshed out the Klingon race into something fantastic and multifaceted and real. I was never a huge Klingon fan until DS9 came along, and after having seen DS9, I was totally into them.
Worf isn't half-human, he was just raised by humans. He was never about "choosing between two worlds" like Spock was, rather his background was more of the "stranger in a strange land" variety -- growing up in an alien environment, he had to become even MORE Klingon to retain his heritage, thus he always took everything seriously, especially Klingon matters like rituals and honor. Early on in the show they established that pretty well when Guinan pointed out that Klingons laugh, but Worf really doesn't (although he softens as time goes on, especially once he gets involved with Dax).
Troi, on the other hand, was explicitly half-human, although it seems that was only because the telepathy that comes with being full-Betazoid would destroy too many of the plotlines -- nobody remembers her mixed heritage all that much and we keep having to be reminded of it when it becomes relevant.
Ok, wow, I stand corrected then. I apologize. For some reason I'd always assumed he was half-human; I don't know where that assumption came from. Maybe it's a bit of mental conflation, given how frequently other aliens-on-the-bridge in Trek series are half human.
Even still, I do think he was choosing between two worlds. Pretty much every time he encountered Klingons in TNG, they made comment about his wearing a Federation uniform and serving under humans. And there were several occasions where the derision went the other way: humans (or non-humans) would chide Picard for having a Klingon officer. Whether we choose to call this trope "stranger in a strange land," "choosing between two worlds," or something else altogether, the fact remains that Worf was an atypical Klingon in atypical circumstances, often forced to choose between whether he was to pursue his Klingon heritage and familial obligations to their fullest, or whether he was to be a Federation/Starfleet officer -- the requirements and laws of which often ran in direct contradiction to Klingon ethics. That was, indeed, a major source of drama for Worf throughout his character's appearance on TNG.
In DS9, yes, you could say he chose to be a Klingon. And by the end of the show, he made that choice unequivocally. Even still, it would have been nice to have had some remnant of the conflict remain. If only because that conflicted forces tradeoffs.
As much as I like supporting actors like Rene Auberjonois and Armin Shimerman, who can shine through the makeup and portray their characters realistically, I have to disagree regarding the main casts. I think they are about even as far as acting ability; from TNG you have excellent actors in Patrick Stewart, Brent Spiner, and LeVar Burton, generally good acting in Michael Dorn, Marina Sirtis, and Jonathan Frakes, And "good enough" from the rest.
In DS9, you had great acting from the above mentioned Auberjonois and Shimerman, though both could ham it up as well. Passing performances by Avery Brooks and Nana Visitor were the norm but they were both known to shine as well as fall flat. Alexander Siddig is an enigma; he was so good at being annoying that one might dismiss him before realizing that he was the perfect choice for the role. Poor Cirroc Lofton, like Wil Wheaton, suffered from the "kid surrounded by grownups" typecasting that often kills a child star's career. Both are decent actors but were never allowed to grow very much with their roles. And again, the remaining cast were neither great nor horrid.
In short, both casts had a range of acting ability, and even the best actor can't always rescue a bad script or director. But to say one is hands-down the best compared to the other is, at best, blind favoritism ("I liked one show better than the other so the other cast must suck").
Q was pretty clearly designed as an antagonist and foil for Jean-Luc Picard, and he never made a lot of sense in the other series. He was brought into those series, like the Borg, for ratings stunts. And it showed.
"I know this is not a popular opinion but this is my favorite Star Trek series, followed by TNG."
I wouldn't necessarily say it's an unpopular opinion. A lot of fans rate DS9 as the best series. They'd be in a minority, but not an outrageously slim minority. DS9's stock has been on the rise pretty consistently, especially since it showed up on Netflix. All the Trek fans who hadn't seen it in its original run, or who might have been put off by some stinkers in Season 1, are now able to see it in its entirety. A lot of them really like what they see. It holds up really well, and I'd put it neck and neck in the running with TNG for my favorite.
Now, if you really wanted to be unpopular? Say that Voyager is the best series. :) You'll have all of maybe two or three supporters on the entire internet to back you up on that claim. Also, the claim would be objectively wrong. Voyager is irredeemable garbage.
I like the idea, however I'd disagree with the heuristic used. DS9 was really the first Star Trek series to introduce story arcs, and as such, skipping the wrong episodes leads to a confusing experience. I'd argue that in order to avoid missing out on important chunks of the arc, hand curation is really the only viable option (maybe text-clustering of plot narratives might work?).
Personally, as a huge DS9 fan, I think that you should watch every episode. Each episode adds colour and depth to the series' characters, and in my opinion makes it the most rewarding Star Trek series.
I tend to be of the "watch it all" camp, since even mediocre episodes make the excellent episodes much more rewarding. And you don't know which is which going in.
That said, "Profit And Lace" has no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
You say that so casually. As someone with no experience in NLP, do you just have topic model algo's or a toolkit lying around? Going on your website this isn't your field of expertise, have you worked on this stuff in the past or just a hobby?
This is a cool idea. I'd like to see it for more shows. With so many shows available on Netflix/Amazon/etc. it's hard to figure out what I should watch when a show has hundreds of available episodes.
In the case of DS9, it's funny that it pretty much matches my experience in that there are very few early episodes then when the big Dominion storyline starts it includes almost all episodes for the last 3 seasons. DS9 became such a great show once Sisko shaved his head and got the goatee. :)
I've been doing this for Stargate by reading the reviews on Gateworld.
On advantage of gateworld which this website misses is that they rate episodes both on quality, and importance to the ongoing plot. I have chosen to watch a couple of episodes which, while rated lowly (mainly because they were disappointments after buildup), are important to the ongoing plot of the show.
I agree this would be great for more shows. I think it would be even more helpful for Star Trek: The Next Generation. Lots of early season TNG is pretty bad as well. I'm watching TNG through Netflix at the moment and I'm going on AVClub to remind myself of which episodes aren't worth my time.
Once I'm a little more comfortable with React I'm going to work on making the whole thing easily forkable so anyone could do it for another show by only modifying some json. I'm thinking X-Files next.
Now seriously, the ferengy were supposed to be there for some humor scenes, and they developed the ferengy society considerably. Female liberation, the challenge of the responsability of the first child vs. the youngest. Etc.
Sisko accepting that Jake dated a Dabo girl...
I disagree that Ferengies are unimportant in the ST universe. They have a role.
I enjoyed "Magnificient Ferengi" in particular. An all Ferengi episode that featured virtually every prominent character of the race except the Grand Nagus.
Edit: It seems even on the list, there is Season 3, "The House of Quark"
I think DS9 just got a little carried away with Ferengi episodes is all. Seriously, you can tell the team loved working with the Ferengi characters because there are so freaking many Ferengi stories. Some of them are pretty bad and extraneous, just tedious comedy episodes. The overall Ferengi arc is good, and the big key turning points are good, but they're probably the worst episodes for pulling out eye-rolling bad comedy.
What totally pulls me out of the universe when watching the Ferengi episodes is that the "Grand Nagus", who is a hugely important person, vastly wealthy and ruler of a nation(?)... has no staff and it's up to some random bartender to get him out of trouble. I know there's protagonist syndrome, but this is stretching it too far.
The Ferengi operated on an uber-capitalist society, so he pays for his own staff out of his own pockets. In one episode, the Grand Nagus mentions firing his staff because they were too expensive and he wanted to use the money to buy something.
1. has to have at least two established theories (cosmological or otherwise) in it
2. they must combine to create a dramatic plot issue
3. in a fashion which doesn't involve a time-loop paradox
that or some generic metric; "Firefly is delightful, but only scores 2.7 Asimovs"
I agree that Dr. Who is most certainly science fiction, but I've __noticed__ a lot more instances of script-writer-protection of the heroes in the 2005+ Dr. Who. So many times that the bad guys decide to do something other than Just Kill Them.
I don't mind that the Sonic Screwdriver is a psychic Scotty in a stick ( ;) ), but the fact that the Doctor and friends don't get shot in the face (especially once he reveals who he is) more often is getting almost absurd.
Star Trek certainly has it's share of that kind of writer-armor for characters, but many more of them are less overt. As in, the Romulans/Klingons aren't going to just kill Kirk or Picard for $Reasons, or $Treaty.
Many seasons start with a great potential, only to fall on their face. It can create such nice ideas... and then destroy them by reusing and abusing them.
(Weeping angels)
It also doesn't know how to 'scale'.
In the first (2005+) episode with the Dalek, you see how terrible and brutally efficient they are. Fast forward a few episodes/seasons, and now you must have an entire army to show how things are 'bad'.
Did you notice how many times the overall arc changes? Or rather, how it isn't described at all so the writers can come up with whatever they want?
SPOILERS
"Bad wolf" ---> "Oh I've just taken these words and sent them myself in the past." Yeah, right.
"Silence will fall" ---> So it's an event? Eh... no... it's a species that make you forget when you watch them? Almost... It's a religious movement! There! Phew, we almost had to plan something!
It's not in the same optimistic genre as Star Trek TNG, but the 100 is watchable. It has a younger cast, so it might be better at getting younger viewers into sci-fi. Other current sci-fi, also not in the TNG genre but still enjoyable: Continuum, Defiance.
Actually it's a great premise, but it is overshadowed by the "cool teen" factor which plagues other shows on the CW (though Arrow has mostly been able to escape that..for now).
The Vampire Diaries is a good example of what being on the CW does to a show. It started out in the first two seasons as a dark, violent, mostly serious take on the "teenage vampire" trope, and could be enjoyed by both teens and GenX/GenY fans of the vampire genre. It has a pretty good cast (Nina Dobrev's "Katie Holmes v2" notwithstanding). After those first seasons, however, it devolved into the stereotypical teen drama + nonsensical mysticism. Eventually, after seeing a school dance or town festival as the main plot device every two episodes, I had to stop watching it. My wife still watches, but she tends to enjoy the occasional plotless teen drama.
The remade Battlestar Galactica series had one horrible episode: "Black Market". I think everyone agrees that it's not good. However, if I was a first time watcher and someone told me to skip it, I would not have done so. I guess I like to watch the entire show and form my own opinions.
tldr; season 1 and 2 are weak, and then they find their pace and things are amazing.
More seriously, though, I'm so glad In The Pale Moonlight is ranked as one the top episodes (three episodes are ranked 9.5). I think it's one of the best episodes of television and Star Trek in general, and it's certainly one of my favorite episodes of DS9.
(in case anyone doesn't remember, it's the episode where Sisko gets the Romulans into the war with Garak's help, and has a final monologue in lines with "I can live with it" -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-YyL7X4CWw)
DS9 gets good as soon as Sisko has the goatee. TNG post beard as well.
If you watch DS9 Ep 04x02 you'll notice a familiar phrase shouted by the hilarious klingon guy 'we do not forgive, or forget' which was played in a raid chatroom back in 2004 and soon afterwards appeared in call to arms threads
Well, the point is that--for most shows and most people--the idea of jumping into a previously aired series requiring a 100+ hour commitment to work through is daunting, to put it mildly. Given the amount of TV hours I budget, I know it's a non-started for me; I still haven't made it all the way through the Sopranos. There are a lot of shows--even many with well-defined arcs--that lend themselves to a "20 hour version" or so approach capturing both the overall flow and feel of the series. I'm not sure it works for everything--not sure about BSG or Lost for example--but I think it works pretty well for most of Star Trek.
If you want to do this for the X-Files and follow the story arc while skipping all the 'Monster of the Week' stuff, you can do so with this episode guide:
The problem with that approach is that the MotW episodes include some of the X-Files' very best, and the Mythology became very weak and incoherent in the later seasons. I think you'd at least want to mix in some of the best MotW eps, and probably all the Lone Gunman ones as well.
A helpful next feature would be to somehow show the skipped episodes so the user could take some action to peek at the synopsis and rating to see if they really wanted to skip it.
Another helpful feature would be to tag all the episodes by character and theme. A user could be a huge fan of say, Jake episodes and Bajor oriented episodes, and if they came across such an episode with a low score, they might decide to watch it anyway.
This reminds me of a similar exercise to find the optimal viewing order of Battlestar Galactica episodes, movies, web-series, deleted scenes, extended episodes, etc.
Thanks! I was looking for a new show to binge-watch on Netflix.
I wanted to point out that (after just now checking) Netflix isn't consistent with their two-part show listings as they relate to Netflix's episode number. For example, the two-parter of S01E01-02 and S04E01-02 are listed as one episode on Netflix. S02E20-21 are listed as two separate episodes. It gets out of sync with the guide. Not a huge deal, just need to make sure to pay attention to episode title as opposed to episode number.
You can safely skip all the episodes where Kiera is an evil vixen in a weird parallel universe. Also those where O'Brien gets tortured again. Those are just cringe-worthy.
Voyager is actually a pretty good example of a show that was... flawed... in many ways but which nonetheless had some pretty good episodes that could be enjoyed in relative isolation. For some reason, some of the time travel mini-arcs worked pretty well for me--perhaps because they existed somewhat outside of an overall story arc that never completely clicked for me.
A lot of the greatest hits of Voyager outright contradicted each other. "Blink Of An Eye" is a wonderful piece of sci-fi, but it totally doesn't fit in the Trek world.
There was a move away from continuity after DS9, which given the larger pace of television since then looks downright silly today.
>There was a move away from continuity after DS9, which given the larger pace of television since then looks downright silly today.
Well, we're in a phase where much of the better television is indeed very arc-centric. I'm not convinced that's an unalloyed good although it's a fairly natural outcome of a variety of factors including on-demand viewing and serial TV being something that can 't really be replicated in movies (for the most part). On the other hand, there are certainly examples of historical TV SF that haven't been serialized and, in the case of The Twilight Zone, were purely anthologies.
At the time, I thought it was utterly forgettable and stopped watching after the first season. I netflixed it a couple of years ago and was surprised to find myself very pleasantly surprised at how good the writing was. I'm inclined to agree with you, even if the original series holds a special campy place in my heart (no, I'm not old enough to have seen it in its first run).
Then I watched Voyager hoping it too was better than I remembered. It was not.
As an aside, I've been enjoying the youtube series "Star Trek Continues." They've done a great job of capturing the aesthetic of the original. I'm hoping they'll have some new episodes soon.
The "P5 rating" for each episode tends to be a very reliable indicator of its quality. That said, B5 cannot be watched out of sequence, and there are very few episodes which one can skip, due to the nature of the story arc.
You can skip most of the first season without too much detriment, maybe up until the last six episodes. It had a lot of onboarding, and honestly served mainly to get audiences used to the style of the universe and that things were not just rubber-mask villain-of-the-week nonsense (the passing of Ivanova's father, for example).
I used to feel terrible about Crusade - I was a huge B5 fan when it came out. Then, I watched it (what there was of it) again recently... it really wasn't that good. I don't know that showing the episodes in the proper order would have saved it, although maybe it should have gotten a chance to find its footing either way.
Your mother is an excellent judge of sci-fi character.
I've seen many arguments that the role of Sisko was heavy handed in many ways and there are some truth to that, but with the exception of a few, any episode featuring the brilliant Avery Brooks is likely to be a good one.
For instance, we watched the episode where Picard is kidnapped by the Borg. As a teenager, my drama-IQ was not so low that I entirely missed the major storyline that Riker gets in that story about his career as he is challenged by the up-and-coming Shelby, but I certainly see it much more clearly and with far more nuance now.