What was up with the B&B hate back in the 90's & 00's?
- Thread starter Admiral Jean-Luc Picard
- Start date
Thank you for explaining. In GEN, the Enterprise-D was just continuing it's TNG mission until blown out of the sky.
In FC, the Enterprise-E was a year into doing whatever they do when the Borg show up. By INS, the Enterprise-E is cruising around to make allies during the war with the Dominion, and then they had to go deal with Data and the Son'a. Fast forwarding to Nemesis, the Enterprise was on its way to Betazoid (like on the show) and then got sent on a thought-to-be diplomatic mission (like on the show).In GEN, Geordi installs the chip, it fuses with Data's neural net, malfunctions, Data learns to deal, and by the film's end, it's revealed that Doctor Crusher can remove it, but Data declined and is embracing emotion. FC is 2 years later. It's entirely reasonable that Data learned how to switch off the chip during crisis. When we get to INS, the chip is removed, but... no explanation. Picard asks if it's the emotion chip, and Geordi says he didn't take it with him. They made it sound like he left behind his sunglasses.
In Generations, they installed the emotion chip. It annoyed me to no end, even at age 15. I just didn't think Data with emotions was funny, and they were forcing it way too hard. In First Contact, he's gained the option to turn it off. In 1996, I thought to myself, "Thank God!" In Insurrection, it's at the point where he doesn't have it at all. It's one line, "He didn't take it with him." I moved on right with the film. My thought in 1998 was, "Works for me!" By 2002 and Nemesis, I totally forgot and so did they.
The through-line: Data's emotion chip went over about as well as New Coke. It's Picard Season 3 where I finally think they had a good handle on Data with emotions. First Contact also handled it well, because they only used Data's emotions when it served the plot. The rest of the time, it was out sight and out of mind.
What makes PIC S3's handling of Data's emotions better than FC's is that in PIC S3, he can't turn it off his emotions but it seems like while he still hasn't mastered them fully, he's at least mastered them enough that he can be a functional adult. I attribute that to the dormant Altan Soong's life experience in there, and Lore serving as another balance. If you treat PIC Data like Kirk in "The Enemy Within", regular Data is like Good Kirk and Lore is like Evil Kirk. Between Altan, Data, and Lore, PIC Data now has an ego, superego, and id.
The only two TNG Movies I'm really a fan of are First Contact and Picard Season 3 (yes, I'm counting PIC S3 as a TNG Movie). But I won't hold doing away with the emotion chip against Insurrection and Nemesis. If they weren't going to handle it in a way that wouldn't make me cringe, I preferred that they didn't do anything with it at all. I'm okay with the creators admitting, "Okay, that didn't work! Let's sweep it under the rug!"
The through-line: Data's emotion chip went over about as well as New Coke. It's Picard Season 3 where I finally think they had a good handle on Data with emotions. First Contact also handled it well, because they only used Data's emotions when it served the plot. The rest of the time, it was out sight and out of mind.
What makes PIC S3's handling of Data's emotions better than FC's is that in PIC S3, he can't turn it off his emotions but it seems like while he still hasn't mastered them fully, he's at least mastered them enough that he can be a functional adult. I attribute that to the dormant Altan Soong's life experience in there, and Lore serving as another balance. If you treat PIC Data like Kirk in "The Enemy Within", regular Data is like Good Kirk and Lore is like Evil Kirk. Between Altan, Data, and Lore, PIC Data now has an ego, superego, and id.
The only two TNG Movies I'm really a fan of are First Contact and Picard Season 3 (yes, I'm counting PIC S3 as a TNG Movie). But I won't hold doing away with the emotion chip against Insurrection and Nemesis. If they weren't going to handle it in a way that wouldn't make me cringe, I preferred that they didn't do anything with it at all. I'm okay with the creators admitting, "Okay, that didn't work! Let's sweep it under the rug!"
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Yes, as I said. Distracting. And Troi just says it can be removed, not that Crusher can but that's a quibble.Data learns to deal, and by the film's end, it's revealed that Doctor Crusher can remove it, but Data declined and is embracing emotion. FC is 2 years later. It's entirely reasonable that Data learned how to switch off the chip during crisis. When we get to INS, the chip is removed, but... no explanation. Picard asks if it's the emotion chip, and Geordi says he didn't take it with him. They made it sound like he left behind his sunglasses.
More frustrating is just that it gets treated, as you said, like he forgot his sunglasses. It's a minor detail that's very distracting.
And that was my biggest thing of a minor complaint: they opted to ignore it and that felt like a "Don't pay attention to this thing behind the curtain" attitude, rather than just opting towards a closer resolution like the end of "Descent."
Naah, it's definitely not distracting. It's a "okay, they had a situation, dealt with it and now things can work differently"-Situation, not a "disctraction".
Yeah, nothing about Data distracted me. If anything distracted me, it was trying to figure out when to place Insurrection in relation to DS9. But that was something for after watching the movie. Not while I was watching it.
EDITED TO ADD: My top two candidates are right before "Penumbra" (which is what I thought in 1999) or during "It's Only A Paper Moon", which covers a long amount of time. Since Worf only appears at the very beginning of "Paper Moon", it gives him a large enough window to be away from the station for a while. And "Penumbra" had the window built right into it, with Worf already nowhere near the station and reported missing. I lean more towards shortly before "Penumbra" because Insurrection is directly referenced in that episode.
Some have suggested Insurrection takes place during "What You Leave Behind", but I'm not a fan of that theory. Technically not impossible, but that makes the timing of everything way too tight.
EDITED TO ADD: My top two candidates are right before "Penumbra" (which is what I thought in 1999) or during "It's Only A Paper Moon", which covers a long amount of time. Since Worf only appears at the very beginning of "Paper Moon", it gives him a large enough window to be away from the station for a while. And "Penumbra" had the window built right into it, with Worf already nowhere near the station and reported missing. I lean more towards shortly before "Penumbra" because Insurrection is directly referenced in that episode.
Some have suggested Insurrection takes place during "What You Leave Behind", but I'm not a fan of that theory. Technically not impossible, but that makes the timing of everything way too tight.
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It was distracting for me, and largely that may point to my lack of engagement with the story or characters. If I'm focusing on how a positronic network interacts with a emotions chip I'm probably distracted.
I understand what you're saying, but if I have a choice between "cringe" and "no cringe", I'm going with "no cringe". Comic Relief Data is something I can do without. And, let's be realistic, comic relief was mostly what it was going to be with those movies.
Or exposing yet another vulnerability Data would have with the emotional maturity of a child. Just imagine if they ever showed Data progressing to the emotional maturity of an adolescent. Brent Spiner acting like a horny and anti-social 15-year-old would've been embarrassing to the Nth Degree.
Not that Data being without emotions solves this problem completely. Data telling Worf, "And have you noticed that your boobs have started to firm up?" What the fuck. Almost as bad as Worf's line in PIC S3, "We shall make it a threesome."
What worked well in the previous installments------GENERATIONS especially-----was carried over for the followups. Uhura ''be'' condemning food in UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY because similar humorous moments boosted the popularity of THE VOYAGE HOME beforehand. Not to mention her anachronistic shout-out to tailpipes.
But even in the first Picard-Data interaction in FARPOINT, they gave Data a clear attempt at cuteness/annoying the Captain. For us, at least, he was there to partially relieve, even when things got tense at times for the fictional characters.
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Humor is very hit-and-miss. I think TVH works as a "fish-out-of-water" story. The humor feels organic. Uhura fumbling her way through Klingonese without Universal Translator in TUC also works. If she doesn't know the language then everything's going to sound off, maybe way off.
Data missing the point of things in TNG works. It's funny. Data trying to be funny in Generations works about as well as Data trying to be funny in "The Outrageous Okana". Data's just not funny when he's trying to be. Geordi even tells Data this back in a Season 1 episode (I don't remember which one off-hand), but he never gets it. It's the one where Data says "includaling the kiddalies" by accident, to which Geordi finally laughs.
Data telling Worf, "And have you noticed how your boobs have started to firm up?" just isn't funny. Data or not. Forget about the characters. A man telling another man that, after he overheard two women, just doesn't come across as funny to me. If it were in some stupid situation comedy, or a romcom movie, I still wouldn't have laughed at it.
When I saw Generations in the theater as a kid, the whole theater was roaring with laughter during the emotional Data scenes. 
Same thing happened in my theater too. I'm just giving my particular point-of-view. But I won't deny that when Data said, "Oh shit!" he was saying what we were all thinking.When I saw Generations in the theater as a kid, the whole theater was roaring with laughter during the emotional Data scenes.
To the side: I can't believe that in four days, Generations will have come out 30 years ago!
When I saw the movie, I'd only been into Star Trek for 3-4 years. At the entrance to the theater room, there were two women dressed up in makeup and costume (very authentic) as the Duras sisters. They grabbed me, threatened to beam me up to their ship. I was laughing so hard, they let me go and decided they didn't want me.
This was back when theaters were fun. It must have been opening night or opening week to go for something like that. The whole movie was fun start to finish, but I was so confused when it opened on the Enterprise-B. I was like, did we go to the wrong movie by accident? 78 years later, and I'm, "Oooooohhhhhh." Everyone in the theater laughed hard at all of the emotional Data scenes like the talking tricorder. When the coolant leak happened, I'm like... Geordi will fix it. When they evacuated, I'm like... it'll be fine. When they saucer separated, I'm like... it won't explode. Then the battle section exploded! They'll get another one, it'll be fine. Shockwaves? Thrown across the bridge? It'll be fine. Data, "Ooooooohhhhhhh SHIT!!!" and everyone was dying of laughter. The saucer won't crash! Then it did. That was like 5 minutes of hard denial. Then I had to let my mind wander what the heck they'd be flying around in in their next movie for two years. In the trailers, the Ent-E looked ugly. When I saw the movie propr... 
I've got one for you, but this is '80s Trek, not '90s or '00s Trek. I went to see TWOK at Special Screenings twice. Once in 2010, once in 2017. At the 2010 one, when Kirk screamed "KHAANNNN!!!!!!", I clapped. Then that started a chain reaction and everyone else clapped!When I saw the movie, I'd only been into Star Trek for 3-4 years. At the entrance to the theater room, there were two women dressed up in makeup and costume (very authentic) as the Duras sisters. They grabbed me, threatened to beam me up to their ship. I was laughing so hard, they let me go and decided they didn't want me.
Back to the '90s. When I was watching First Contact in the theater the first time (I went to see it twice), when Picard screamed "NO!!!! NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!" and shattered the glass in the Briefing Room, someone behind me starting singing, "Just one of them days... "
I'm more into '80s music than '90s music, but screw it...
That song would fit pretty well around here too.
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When I saw Insurrection at the theater with my mom, when Picard, the Admiral, and Ruafo are having an argument in Picard's ready room, Ruafo's forehead cut bleeds onto his cheek. This woman at the back of the theater lost it. My mom and I spent the rest of the scene trying not to burst out laughing.I've got one for you, but this is '80s Trek, not '90s or '00s Trek. I went to see TWOK at Special Screenings twice. Once in 2010, once in 2017. At the 2010 one, when Kirk screamed "KHAANNNN!!!!!!", I clapped. Then that started a chain reaction and everyone else clapped!
Back to the '90s. When I was watching First Contact in the theater the first time (I went to see it twice), when Picard screamed "NO!!!! NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!" and shattered the glass in the Briefing Room, someone behind me starting singing, "Just one of them days... "
I'm more into '80s music than '90s music, but screw it...
That song would fit pretty well around here too.
I guess I'm lucky that despite having a strong case of Bush Derangement Syndrome ENT S3 didn't bother me in that regard at the time.They should've called it Bush Trek that season. Although, in fairness, at least Archer didn't invade Qo'noS after the Xindi attacked. He just blew up a Duras ancestor to show off his new weapons!
Probably a third were standalone episodes with a Xindi twist attached. Or even worse a wasn't that the plot of a DS9 or VGR episode? Considering they weren't really working from a master plan, it holds up surprisingly well all things considered. Just too many batches of we need to stall the arc for three eps, let's come up with yet another detour.
VGR had some franchise leading standalone episodes during seasons 5 and 6, but what got me was them giving up on even trying to keep up with the crew causality count, the fucking shuttle issue, and even the jumps the ship made (how did Barclay find them with the "Dark Frontier" jump? how did Lyndsay Ballard catch up with them despite ostensibly dying during season 4?). I swear even that BSG whiteboard with the survivor count must be VGR shade...
Okay you can't have BABYLON 5 level serialization, but at least don't screw up basic internal continuity.
Data sacrificing himself for Picard would have had more depth with the emotion chip, give him an arc there.
Does Data specifically not having emotions come up in NEM? Can't remember.
At least INS doesn't have a stardate to allow for some creative placement. FC's stardate is later than the DS9 episode that references the events of the film.
Nothing ages faster than cringe.
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I never thought about until just now, but you're right. And it makes sense considering Ron Moore wanted to zig everywhere in BSG that VOY zagged.
It doesn't get mentioned at all. But Data's written exactly the same way as he was in late-TNG, so it's what I go with.
A deleted scene reveals this is because the emotion chip is no longer installed, which to be honest, is stupid, considering he spent 7 years chasing emotions.
Are you sure you're not thinking of Insurrection? I know that in INS Geordi says that Data didn't take his emotion chip with him. But I don't remember seeing anything like that in the Deleted Scenes for Nemesis. Granted, it's been a while since I've seen the deleted scenes for NEM.
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