Apparently, the Star Trek: The Next Generation cast got together this past weekend at the Calgary Comic Expo for the first time in many, many years to celebrate the show's 25th anniversary. The reunion includes LeVar Burton, Gates McFadden, Brent Spiner, Wil Wheaton, Jonathan Frakes and Sir Patrick Stewart, which is pretty much everybody you'd want to get together and reminisce about the series (and apparently Michael Dorn, too, as I have been informed). Part 1 is above; parts 2 through 5 are after the jump. I will say there is at least one guest star who shows up at the beginning of part 5 that you'll probably enjoy appearing out of nowhere. Anyways, your lunchtime viewing has been... engaged.
Part 2:
Part 3:
Part 4:
Part 5:
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68 comments
Michael Dorn is right between Marina and Denise. Is the Op retarded??? He ha d a wonderful story about him an Patrick crawling around in cat poop.
I'm shocked this wasn't stolen and put on Dailymotion for ad impression sharing. Fucking shocked.
Oh man, Wil's part about when he left the show, and then Levar's speech at the end - eyes tearing up!
Did the opening introductions remind anyone else of Galaxy Quest? Otherwise, extremely awesome.
I was 14 years old when TNG premiered and I was in freaking love with Dr. Beverly Crusher.
Thanks for posting these. I was seeing them referenced in some other blog and they had nothing. That show shaped my Nerd Matrix. For those of us now in our late 30s there was a wired time of Sci Fi where we were too young to have seen the original show except in reruns, the movies were OK but the ONLY thing we had and we were 6-10ish when they came out.
I know my scifiness really grew from this show. I sat my ass down to watch it on UPN (then a little of Platypus Man with Richard Jenny(sp?) Oh who gives a shit, he's dead.) and was in college when it had its last episode. We sat in our dorm and me and the other nerd watched it in silence.Other than Denise Crosby looking like a hobo, I was happy to see everyone looking well.
"ST-TNG" original episodes never aired on UPN because UPN didn't exist at that time.
The UPN Network's first date of broadcasting was January 16th, 1995. It's first program was "Star Trek - Voyager".
"ST-TNG" aired from September of 1987 to May of 1994. Reruns may certainly have aired on television stations which by then had aligned themselves with UPN.
Did anyone find Shatner...I dunno...misogynistic... in The Captains? I don't really pay attention to that kind of stuff but the way he kept pressing Kate Mulgrew about her hormones while on set and Shatner kept remarking on how dealing with them must have been difficult. Creepy.
Patrick Stewart and Jonathan Frakes are really cuddly. I think Patrick kissed him on the lips when he came on stage. Its kind of...off-putting. I mean, its great that they get along so well and the cast is all the best of friends, and if you're best friends with someone for 25 years there has to be very few barriers but still...
Its like watching your two father figures in a real life Fan Fiction Friday. That's the only way I can convey my feelings.
It's a very "luvvy" style habit amongst English theatrical actors, like constantly drinking cups of tea and bitching about the industry ("WHO THE FUCK IS JOHN SIMM?!"). I can only assume Sir Patrick was camping things up on set one day and Frakes reciprocated with unusual... enthusiasm.
Yeah. It's a theatre thing. Theatre folk are very physical and have few barriers or worries about cultural expectations when it comes to their interaction with each other.
Okay, sorry for the threadjack, but this has always bugged me about ST: TNG. I also apologize in advance if I fuck up my Star Trek lore.
In ST, the teleporters work by converting matter to energy, transmitting the energy to a specific location, then converting the energy back to matter using data about the person/object stored in the teleporter's "buffers". They also use this principle in their replicators and apparently in the holodecks (in First Contact, Picard shoots some borg with a tommy gun he fabricated in the holodeck).
If this is the case, could they not convert Geordie to energy, find the data that indicates why his eyes are fucked up, fix the code, and then convert him back to matter? Never mind just replicating new eyes for him.
Why the hell does poor Geordie have to wear that visor to see?
Its a genetic defect that causes his blindness and the use of eugenics in the Federation is outlawed on account of that whole Khan business, so to mess with it would be illegal. The prosthesis is a bit of a bitch, and for some reason these defects are healed by 'magic' energies (Metaphasic energy, anti-time anomalies). But that's the basic reason. Of course they eventually installed ocular implants which gave him infrared and zoom, so it balances out.
Ah right, I forgot that genetic alteration is illegal in the Federation. In fact, that was the plot of a DS9 episode if I recall. Wasn't Dr. Bashiir illegally genetically altered?
He was, along with five other individuals. Apparently there was only a one-in-six chance of the subject "not" being a goofy caricature of insane people, but one of them was Faith Salie, so there was also in one-in-six chance of chin-butted hotness.
It could be due to minute differences in the sub-cellular structure thanks to the natural atrophy that occurs in things as they age? Enough time may have passed since Geordi last had eyes that the structures differ, but that's just a guess from what I remember of Treknobabble. As for your last question, I think it was just because Geordi loved Devo too much to give up the visor.
Lavar "Reading Rainbow" Burton saying "I never fucking liked you Wil." was one of the most awesome moments I have seen in recent memory.
When William Shatner passes this mortal coil, I'm sure Wil Wheaton will gladly take his place as the most annoying, but also most effective, self-promoting cast member from a Star Trek TV series.
I don't know. Denise Crosby left the show after after 26 episodes, then came back for 5 more. She constantly talks about how wonderful her experience was, and she shows up at every convention, reunion, talk show, etc.
She was in 17% of TNG episodes, yet she's still acts like she was there during the entire run.
Personally, I don't know anyone who liked Tasha Yar. What was her rank anyway, PMS?
I remember seeing her in, I think, the Shield, and it looked like she let herself go. Which was odd, as I had also seen a fairly new "Sci-Fi Original" about some demon-possessed mold around the same time, and she still looked pretty damn good then.
She was actually one of my favorites, and I can't blame her for leaving when she did. They didn't know how to write anything for her to do in the early episodes, and she got sick of it as an actor. She still came back when they gave her something interesting to do.
And besides, she looked good naked. She's the only Trek main cast member that did a nude layout for Playboy.
Indeed, I think TNG learned from that and resolved to give other characters more important harrowing and deadly moments, you know, outside of tubby Kirk getting crushed by a bridge. "Ponch...too...heavy..."
Lieutenant? Though, honestly, she could well have been posthumously awarded a promotion to Lt. Commander, for courage in the face of getting killed by a muck monster.
I had the great pleasure to see this event in person. Rob is forgetting Denise Crosby as well.The event began with a special message from Garret Wang telling a story about how he never watched TNG as a kid, everytime he tried it would be a rerun of "Code of Honor" and he hated it, so when he went in to audition for Voyager he wasnt geeking out constantly and got the job.
Following Garret was a video of a multitude of Sci Fi icons discussing the impact Star Trek had on them and the world. Edward James Olmos, Adam Baldwin, Christopher Judge, George Takei and Walter Koenig all gave touching tributes to the 25th anniversary.
Getting to meet the cast in person was a joy, they are some of the nicest most generous and caring people I have ever met. Sir Patrick was so gracious as to thank me for coming back to get an autograph after getting the line closed just as my turn was coming the day before. He remembered me and apologized for the inconvenience.
Also getting to see Patrick Stewart and Stan Lee nerd out together was pretty epic.
God, they all look so old. And Frakes looks like he ate a Ferengi. I'm having a hard time. It's like the end of "League of Their Own" with all the creepy old ladies.
Have you ever read Frakes' twitter? It's nothing but food jokes. It's kind of depressing actually.
That makes me think of Schindler's List, but I'll try and fail to sidestep making that comment. Hmm, though your comment does remind me of how sad I was after seeing some strange PSA about diabetes that pulled together Harry Morgan, Jamie Farr, and, um, Radar O'Reilly to talk about the dangers of sugary treats. It was especially jarring as you could tell Harry was on his last legs.
