What Are You Watching

[ownedbycats]

Star Trek S3E10: Plato's Stepchildren.

Yes, this one's definitely a weird episode.



Horses... do not make those sounds.

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Star Trek S3E10: Plato's Stepchildren.

Yes, this one's definitely a weird episode.



Horses... do not make those sounds.

It seems like Season 3 of Star Trek - The Original Series had a large number of strange episodes, compared to the previous seasons. Part of it might have been due to the lower budget...which was a factor in the quality of the Third Season and likely contributed to getting it cancelled.

In its last season Star Trek - The Next Generation also had some strange episodes. Among them:

• Masks: An alien probe is transforming the Enterprise into a temple.
• I don't remember the episode's name, but the one where Worf is traveling through different universes, including one where he married to Deanna Troi, and features thousands of Enterprises.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by Solitaire1

It seems like Season 3 of Star Trek - The Original Series had a large number of strange episodes, compared to the previous seasons. Part of it might have been due to the lower budget...which was a factor in the quality of the Third Season and likely contributed to getting it cancelled.

The one with Abraham Lincoln floating outside in space and talking is worth a mention. Also the hippie episode.

The last episode of the series was an awful sexist thing where Captain Kirk swaps bodies with his jealous (and crazy) ex-girlfriend. She then spends the of the episode doing a horrible job of trying to impersonate him, attempts to execute all the senior staff for 'mutiny,' then they randomly switch back with no explanation other than the episode running out of time.

The lack of budget is also quite noticable:

In "The Enterprise Incident," the Romulans are suddenly using ships of Klingon design, presumably so they could re-use the models. (Not sure what happened to the Warbird model from "Balance of Terror." They did digitally insert some in the remaster.)

In "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield," there's an entire segment where one of the aliens arrives on an invisible spaceship, presumably to avoid having to make a new model. Apparently special materials made it invisible, but still visible on sensors.... but then Sulu and Chekov continue to look at the viewscreen to report its movements.

In "The Mark of Gideon," somehow the aliens on a planet so overpopulated that everyone is packed shoulder-to-shoulder managed find the space and resources to build a full-scale replica of the Enterprise in order to trap Captain Kirk and use his blood to spread a deadly disease to the population. Presumably just so they could re-use the Enterprise set instead of making a new one. It was actually a pretty interesting episode up until the reveal, then it just got kind of dumb (apparently these people are too pro-life to use condoms, but killing half the population with a pandemic is perfectly fine).

[mlewis78]

Watching the latest Frontline documentary Democracy on Trial about Trump claiming win, the insurrection, the impeachment proceedings after that. I am watching on youtube (free), but it is also on PBS Passport. It aired on my PBS station Tuesday evening.

https://youtu.be/Y44fyh4ap7k?si=xCBB0ig1xOoSG3zz

[Hitch]

Well...

I dunno, gang. I'm on the latest and greatest installment of Monsieur Spade (AMC, Amazon, and other streaming locations), and I'm still waiting for Sam Spade to show the hell up.

I mean..fine, we have the jaded expat Americano, living in France, in some vineyard somewhere, having inherited property and a chateau (bigger than a maison, fersure) and yes, there are murders.

But so far...it's just not floating my boat. Anybody else? Seeing something I'm missing or...?

Hitch

[cc_in_oh]

We liked The Killing on AMC and finally got a chance to watch S1 of Forbrydelsen. The English is pretty bad, I would have much preferred subtitles, but it's a great show. It's much more focused on the political intrigue,which I think does more to maintain the suspense (over 20 episodes no less). The two are enough different to make both well worth watching.

[afv011]

Originally Posted by Solitaire1

I don't remember the episode's name, but the one where Worf is traveling through different universes, including one where he married to Deanna Troi, and features thousands of Enterprises.

Parallels. That's one of my favorite episodes, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by afv011

Parallels. That's one of my favorite episodes, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

One of the nice touches about the episode is that there are subtitle differences in many cases. As an example, in one segment Data has blue eyes instead of gold. I also liked that they used it as an opportunity to show how bad things could have gone, such as in one universe Picard was not rescued from The Borg, and in another a shattered Riker begs for help in a universe where The Borg are everywhere.

[Hitch]

Warning, rant, no value other than steam-blowing:

Honest to crap...

So, last night, we were sitting there like good little bunnies, trying- TRYING- to watch Monsieur Spade (again). And what happened?

For reasons that elude me, the idiots that are handling/managing the closed captioning have decided that wherever the filmmaker/director/whatever has placed the English-language translations for French, Algerian, and so forth--they, the captioners, will place icons for items on the soundtrack. So, instead of reading "And the solution to the murder is...." (for someone speaking French, but being translated by the filmmaker, not by captioners, for clarity), you get to see...a musical note, telling you that music is playing in the background. Or a cow is lowing. or...some other worthless thing.

I mean, is it really THAT G*DD*AMNED hard for someone to actually just look at the screen? For its customers that are hearing-impaired? I spent half of the stupid show flipping captioning on, off, on, off. so that my husband, who is not quite profoundly deaf but not far off it these days, could keep up because he can't hear many of the voices. I had to constantly back up, turn the captioning off, watch for 1 minute, realize it had gone back to normal (English) andthen go back, switch the captioning back on...utterly ruined the entire show for him. He finally got disgusted and stopped watching.

Gosh, thanks, AMC and everybody else involved, for once again, completely and I mean COMPLETELY ignoring accessibility. What is the bleeding point of even trying to have captions, if you're going to make the entire show a misery to watch? Why is it so hard for you to have a QA department that could check this stuff? Why am I talking about this now, when presumably, 1,000 other people maybe (maybe) tweeted you about it?

UGH.

Hitch

[Rumpelteazer]

The quality of the subtitles has been going downhill for years.

HBO (streaming) makes a mess of it, regularly putting the wrong language in (e.g. French subtitles when it should be English). Missing subtitles, especially for new episodes, or most episodes in a season have subtitles but one or two don't.

My personal bugbear is when no English subtitle is available. I prefer English over Dutch subtitles because of the bad translation nowadays. In the past a translator would watch the episode so they have context for the translation. Nowadays they only get the script, so often you get weird translations. Technically correct translations, but not contextually correct. And sometimes I don't even think a human translated it, but it's just been Google translated.

[poohbear_nc]

The absolute worst subtitles are on Netflix - for non-English shows that have been dubbed into English - what the actors are 'saying' doesn't match the translated into English subtitles - the worst case was a French mystery where the two English versions were way off ...

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

The absolute worst subtitles are on Netflix - for non-English shows that have been dubbed into English - what the actors are 'saying' doesn't match the translated into English subtitles - the worst case was a French mystery where the two English versions were way off ...

I've had that experience with some anime. I was watching Bleach and found many differences between the dubbed dialog and the subtitles (which I think are based on the original Japanese dialog).

I do expect differences based on localization of the original dialog to deal with issues where the original dialog might not be clear to a non-Japanese audience. This includes the elimination of honorifics in the subtitles/dubbing (often in the manga they include a page that explains the honorifics).

This was taken to an extreme in the anime Excel Saga where there was so many cultural references that had to be explained that they included popup notes (just like those in the show Pop Up Video) to explain everything (I estimate that each episode had over 100 of these popups).

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

The absolute worst subtitles are on Netflix - for non-English shows that have been dubbed into English - what the actors are 'saying' doesn't match the translated into English subtitles - the worst case was a French mystery where the two English versions were way off ...

Oh, hell, Pooh--the captions not matching what's being said has been going on and going downhill for years. It's more like they take the shooting script and then TRANSLATE it and then the dubber says the approximate translation, not an accurate recitation fo what was said in English (or whatever). So if the French version was something like, (In Monsieur Spade) "what do you expect from a dish named Toad in the Hole," the English translation is completely different, only conveying, if you are lucky, the disdain that the Frenchman has for UK cooking.

(to be fair, I do realize that it's entirely possible that it's IMpossible for the translation and dubbing to run the same length as the original spoken phrase, and steps have to be taken, but I don't believe it's happening on every line.)

It's frustrating as hell and it doesn't help those who are hard of hearing, who are trying to read lips and "hear" what they can and then see a completely different line on he screen.

And as I said, this crap with the sound-effect notes, hiding the filmmaker-created captioning? That's utter BS.

Hitch

[ownedbycats]

For an episode that reminds you that the original Star Trek started and ended in the 1960s:

S3E20: The Way to Eden

The one where space hippies hijack the Enterprise.



Apparently one of them used to be acquainted with Mr. Chekov (who's gone weirdly out-of-character and is now rigidly pro-establishment). Very well-acquainted:





Hilariously, it's Spock who gets along best with the hippies:







Captain Kirk just seems exasperated with the whole thing:



The hippies don't think much of the "great white captain upstairs" either. He's a 'herbert.' Apparently Herbert was a "minor official notorious for his rigid and limited patterns of thought." Where have I seen that name before?



The space hippies also have a tendency to burst into song at the slightest provocation. (Shame that Uhura is missing in this episode.) One of them plays an instrument that looks suspiciously like a wagon wheel prop:



So anyways, toward the end, the hippies hijack the Enterprise (that's definitely...a sentence) and steer the ship into Romulan space looking for the mythical paradise planet called Eden. And... they find it! Except whoops, all the plant life is filled with acid. We get some nice shots of the hippies' bare feet blistered by the acidic grass. I won't post a screencap.

Also one of them dies by eating a poisonous fruit. (I guess he didn't hear the others screaming as their feet got burned.) His name was Adam. Not exactly subtle on the metaphors there.

(Hilariously, the Romulans don't even notice - despite other episodes having them show up and surround the Enterprise the exact moment they stray into their territory. I guess someone at the border monitoring station fell asleep that day.)

[cc_in_oh]

PBS's Murder in Sweden is very good. Eva Rose and her glorious head of hair would be perfect as some Norse goddess!