Can she cut guns in half with her mind?
I’ve got a two-fer: shows that portray a medieval-technology world but have characters that look like they belong in the modern world.
Jaime Lannister acts, and looks, just like a character in a modern film and not like the other people in Game of Thrones.
Jeremy Irons in the 2000 film Dungeons and Dragons acts and looks more like a James Bond evil overlord than a medieval wizard evil overlord.
I don’t disagree. Angel was a thoroughly annoying little sleazebag.
It’s all Saurian brandy under the bridge, but the original Star Trek would’ve been better without Nurse Chapel pining after Spock.
Oh yes, I forgot how annoying she was.
I mean, I understand the use of an audience surrogate, but other than Obsession, did she ever show competence as a nurse?
You know, Dr M’Benga was in two episodes, but it seemed like way more. Chapel was in 25 and I couldn’t even list them all from memory.
He had an incredible skill at making his problems into Jim’s problems - but somehow Jim always ended up feeling a little more obligated than annoyed by him. I can’t explain it but I’ve cwetainly known people with friends like that
Wasn’t the real reason for Nurse Chapel’s presence that the actress was married to Gene Roddenberry?
Pretty much, though at the time, they were not yet married – Roddenberry was married to his first wife until 1969, but had a number of affairs, including with both Majel Barrett and Nichelle Nichols, prior to Star Trek. His affair was Barrett was apparently the most serious one, as he and Barrett were sharing an apartment; the two of them got married days after Roddenberry’s divorce from his first wife was finalized, in late 1969 (several months after TOS went off the air).
Rockford was in prison with Angel. Rockford was later exonerated but he was still in prison. I am assuming Angel was an ally there. Angel may have had a crafty side but he was likely a good ally in prison compared to the other inmates. Rockford probably felt like he owed him a lot, like an old Army buddy, helped him through some tough times.
Rockford was more of an antihero PI anyway, compared to Mannix and other shows. Not only not wanting to fight and being bad at it, but he was more willing to use sleazy tactics in his work than the others were.
I thought that at the time. I somewhere came across a discussion of “Male Gaze”, that cited as an example a scene from ST:NG - can’t remember which episode - in which Picard, Troi, and some other male character were climbing up an access tube ladder. The shot opened with the ladder, and then Picard, climbing in from below the frame. The camera showed his head, shoulders, and back, and then cut away to the next man - again, head, shoulders, and torso. But when Troi came into scene, the camera stayed with her as her whole body moved through the frame, affording a long look at her tightly-unitarded buttocks. She got a bit of character development later in the series, but I always thought she was initially written in for fanservice.
True. And whatever Rockford owed Angel for help in prison, Angel would surely remind him of.
My favorite Rockford opening message is from Angel, by the way:
“Jimmy, it’s Angel. Don’t pay no attention to my other message. You’re out of it. You’re clean, no trouble at all. Just ignore the first message.” That is bound to get your attention.
I agree!
I’ve listened to all those books (I miss René Auberjonois, the perfect Pendergast voice). Do NOT listen to the previous one, Bloodless. Constance the oh-so-twee is inexplicably given a sharp, harsh matronly voice.
Now I’m on The Cabinet of Dr. Leng, and she’s back to sounding like a young woman, and she’s kicking ass in the 19th century… time travel? Seriously?
Still annoying, still a distraction.
Pendergast is such a great character when he’s, y’know, doing his job as an FBI agent. Can we stop with the needless and overblown soap opera, and get back to that?
I’m so glad for you. You’ve never had to work with (or around) “The Boss’s Favorite Yahoo.”
It might be his old fraternity pal that drops in regularly 11-ish to take him out to a liquid lunch.
Or the client that he goes out to “the tittie bar” with.
Or the often-drunk golf buddy that he’s somehow managed to hire as a consultant… and who’s about to ‘just sit in on’ (disrupt) the client meeting that you really need to go well.
My favorite scene was one where Riker was instructing Wesley how to sweet talk a girl by practicing on
Guinan. Who ends the scene by saying something like “get lost, kid.”
I believe in the original description of the character Troi was supposed to have three breasts. Roddenberry was obsessed by this concept, one character in one of his pilots had them also.
So, back to the thread, can we count one of Troi’s breasts?
Yes!
I’m not quite sure what the fascination with three breasts is. Total Recall went ahead and made it reality. I know some guys are just obsessed, but to me it destroys symmetry. And makes bikinis look stupid. 
I remember watching the original Terminator on VHS with a buddy and his father. When Sarah Connor asks Reese what women are like in the future, buddy’s father piped up, “They’ve got three breasts! One’s on their back, though, so it’s more fun to slow dance with them!”
Now I’m worried, since for most of my career I was the boss. [mentally taking inventory of my friends…]
I suspect that it’s just a way of altering the human form to make it alien, but in a way that seems erotic. Zaphod Beeblebrox has two heads and three hands. Eccentrica Gallumbits, the triple-breasted whore of Eroticon-6, has three breasts. (At least, I assume so. I suppose it could be interpreted as three pairs of breasts.)
“The world is cruel to shiny things.”
For the most part I agree, but the stump episode was pretty good and I learned something new about Hillbilly Culture.
I was actually thinking of coming into the thread and naming Guinan as the one who didn’t belong, and for much the same reason that @zbuzz points out- we already had a ship’s counselor, and there wasn’t really a need for a bartender, what with replicators and all, and even if they did, there wouldn’t be a good reason to pick up some mysterious alien to do that job. Far more likely they’d have a Starfleet Chief Culinary Specialist or someone like that overseeing Ten-Forward, with a gaggle of junior enlisted bartenders and waitresses.
She was a source of mystical nonsense in a show that was otherwise relentlessly technical, or at least techno-babblical, and that was always off-putting to me.
So long as we’re talking smack about the women on TNG and roles already being filled: when Tasha Yar got killed off, as far as I can tell Worf started officially doing her job while he kept doing his old job.
Which is to say: he’s the guy at tactical whenever a big fire-torpedoes-at-an-enemy-ship engagement is the high point of an episode, and he’s the chief-of-security guy for scenes where intruders get confronted in person and shot with a hand weapon or hauled off to the brig or whatever. Oh, sure, he’ll be right there if you want to lock the Enterprise’s phasers on this or that target; but if the script calls for someone to walk the hallways playing bodyguard? Also him.