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I dont like to talk about TNG because I just thought it was a bit pants (and then there was the worse spin offs). 

You're right about the spin-offs, talk about running a good idea into the ground, and whilst I still like (loved it years ago) TNG, it really started to tail off in overall quality around the time they started with the aforementioned gratuitous spin-offs around the fifth season (1991-92), apart from the occasional remarkable episode and/or storyline (the Klingon civil war, the appearance of Spock on Romulus, etc), but it's a shame they didn't just concentrate on TNG alone, and keep all the good material for that series, and when Patrick Stewart announced he was leaving after the seventh (and easily the dullest) season, they should have waited until all work on the series was complete before even thinking about a TNG movie, and then maybe the resulting film may have had a much better script and be a lot less rushed overall... even if you don't like TNG, Slips dude, I suggest you watch the Best of Both Worlds  two-parter, the highpoint of the entire franchise; epic and dark and awesome, "resistance is futile", indeed!

Sorry if I sounded glib Beaky Smoochies perhaps we can't really understand the cataclysmic culture shock for the USA 9/11 was and still is.
The TV series 'Homeland' is a very good example of this. To much exposure to the enemy might turn you into one it seems to be saying. If even your Defenders can be turned against you who can you trust?

No worries dude, I got your meaning alright, and you are absolutely correct that most non-Americans fail to grasp the cataclysmic impact that 9/11 had on the American psyche, if it was Canary Wharf that had been levelled and not the WTC, a lot more people would understand the grief and pain that America felt, not to mention their completely proportional response to it... in regards to Homeland, I have mixed feelings about that show, it's clearly an excellent and quality show, but unlike 24 which had both liberal and conservative writers on the staff (and thus came across as balanced), Homeland's writers are ALL left-leaning liberal Democrats, so it doesn't explore both sides the way it should, it's almost sympathetic to the erroneous view that the U.S. brought terrorism on itself through it's own actions worldwide, a view I find not only wrong but utterly reprehensible!

Anyhoo, back to the thread's subject, Star Trek's original and TNG series' are both great shows, forget the other spin-offs, with the second, third, fourth, and sixth movies superb, the TNG movies not so.  Babylon 5 is just different to Trek in that it's eseentially a singular, concurrent storyline with a clear beginning, middle, and end - Seasons 1-5, forget the movies (except In The Beginning ) and spin-offs - the only reason for B5 to return would have been to do a proper theatrically-released feature film that took place in the twenty years between the penultimate and final episodes of the fifth and final season, but as the actors who played G'Kar and the coloured doctor (I forget his name) are both deceased, that opportunity has since gone...

More aggressive series like Stargate replaced Trek with it's much more gun ho militaristic style and the obviously middle Eastern inspired Goa'uld were little more than cyphers for Americas dislike of Arab type cultures generally. 

Yeah, those nasty, xenophobic Americans, it's not as if any Arab types have done anything to them, is it...?

Jesus do I hate living in this shitty, backwards, insular wee province.

Tell that to the voluminous amounts of Brits now living here, I've never heard so many English and Scottish accents on the street as over the last decade, and they ALL (almost without exception) say they love here, and wouldn't go back to Blighty if you put a gun to their he- um, maybe that's not the most appropriate metaphor for this place, woops...

TWD IS a soap opera with zombies, its the same as the comic except the characters are dumber. Whenever I finish one of the issues I nearly always hear the Eastenders end theme due to the cliffhanger nature.

Gotcha, never read the comic, soap-opera-with-zombies it is, then...

Now I've brought Star Wars into the debate I suppose I had better add that in some way, people who disagree with me, are like Hitler.

You couldn't let it lie, could ya, bringing THOSE BLOODY MOVIES (PT not OT) into the debate ?  You're not a viewer of Fox News' Red Eye programme are you, that Hitler comment is basically an oft-used quip by that show's host Greg Gutfeld?

The unbridled truth is neither Britain nor the Republic really wants fiscal or full responsibility for the North, hence the reluctance of any southern Irish government to whole-heartedly push for re-unification and Britain only holds on for the obvious complications of letting go and it's responsible place, historically, as the major player.
Ideologically some minor sections of the Irish body-politic may now and again tout visions of a nation once again but as is the way of these things, it appeals to a certain notion of political destiny for a minority of entrenched nationalists at voting time but that doesn't pay the bills for the rest of us.

Agreed Joe, darn good points... unfortunately (for the decent majority across this wonderful little island)!

Posted an, errr, robust comment, thought better of it.  I'm conscious that firing off one aggressive response and then leaving a discussion is a shitty thing to do, and I didn't want to spend my day in pointless argument.  It's sunny out, and I have concrete to mix.  That's enough stirring for anyone.

Don't hold back on my account, Tordelback dude, go nuts, if you think I'm wrong/deluded/insane/whatever, then people fought and died for your right to get stuck in, have one on me...

I'd like to argue but I don't have a leg to stand on 

Those damn different genetics of ours a few miles over the West Wall of the six-counties left us without decent bipedal -or bicameral- support.
Hopefully the Great Nothern Assembly will build town-ships for us one day.

Just stirring the pot a bit guys, a little humour on my part, no insult intended, apologies if taken that way...

And I've been openly critical of us northern Protestants on this forum before, we've certainly behaved in a less than Christian way in the past, no argument there, but it was the politicisation of the Gaelic culture and a narrow-minded anti-Britishness (whilst understandable) that drove many Protestants away from self-rule and closer to Westminster, considering it was Anglo-Irish Protestants who basically founded the Irish republican movement. 

A good case in point is how many Irish Protestants considered themselves 'Irish' in nationality at the beginning of the 20th Century compared to those same people a decade or so later who had then switched to the 'British' nationality option in the national census, what happened in between was the explosion of the Home Rule movement, the UVF/Volunteers gun-running escapades, the Ulster Covenant, the 1916 Rising, the so-called War of Independence, and ultimately partition.  The Irish separatist leaders were right to be angry at the exclusion of the north-eastern counties from the newly-independent state as that was where the main industries of the island were concentrated, and made it harder to balance their economy next to the U.K. -  but President Cosgrave and co did all right until Dev and Fianna Fail came along and wrecked the place... a tradition ably followed by Bertie and Biffo in recent years! - but at the same time, there was no advantage nor incentive for Protestants to join the State in 1921, maybe if some Protestant leader(s) had a forward-looking view and negotiated a better deal for the north in a unitary Irish state (independence for the northern legislature from the national one in Dublin, caps on income and business tax rates, guaranteed continued free trade with the British Empire, etc), things could have been different, and I'm certainly not ideologically against such a thing ever happening in the future, but we look across the border and see the mess you lot have made of your country - and it didn't have to be that way, Ireland could have been the Switzerland of the north Atlantic - and thank the good Lord we didn't throw our lot in with it, it's not personal, it's the economy (stupid), not to mention a few other things as well...   

Has anyone else figured out that Scott Wilson, the actor who plays Herschel, also played Pa Angel in the 1995 Judge Dredd 'adaptation' (inverted commas intentional), or am I just slow on the uptake...?

Gotta agree with Brendan Block here. So far it's not scaled the heights of BSG, The Wire or Sopranos, and it looks like it never will, but that said I've found it gripping and always entertaining. I don't think the criticisms of being like a soap when the zombies aren't around are accurate either, and for me Shane was way more than just a plot device (largely down to Bernthal's handling of the character).

Anyway, you don't always want to watch a 10/10 do you? Sometimes you'd rather watch a 7 or an 8. I mean, I'd give Terrence Malick's 'The Thin Red Line' a perfect 10, but I'm not always in the mood for spectacular cinematography, meandering plot and existential soul-searching on the battlefield. Sometimes I want 'Big Trouble in Little China'.

I fully understand your viewpoint, but the fact is that TWD just plain bored me, the sole reason I gave up on it, and I really wanted to love it, the first two (Frank Darabont-directed, no coincidence) episodes were truly outstanding, but ever since then, it's been more like an insomnia remedy, it has been little more than an overly melodramatic, glorified soap opera with zombies in it, in my humble opinion, but then again, so was 24 (minus the zombies, of course), but at least THAT was outrageously entertaining all the way through... and in regards to Big Trouble In Little China, at least that's far from boring , who wouldn't want classic Carpenter!?

Here's a few nice snaps of Anthony Dod Mantle shooting Dredd to tide us over

Great find, where'd you get those pics Joe...?

I agree and disagree with your assumption on the xmen movies.  I actually didnt like the first one, I thought it was a rehashed cliched 1960's comic book plot that wouldnt have looked out of place in the Batman TV series of the same era.  The second one was a far superior movie, probably due to production values and a better script.  The third one was barely passable, Origins just stank.     

If the first one had flaws, it was because FOX were stingy with the budget, the final reel wasn't as good as the rest of the film, plus it telegraphed potential sequels too heavily instead of being a satisfying film in it's own right.  The second one did have better production values but what did it do if not the first movie with more elaborate but less memorable setpieces (Wolverine's encounter with the cat notwithstanding, a nice little scene that should have been in the first one), once you make the initial socio-political allegory about prejudice, everything after that is just old ground recovered, besides, Wolverine's past is never explored in the comics, it's what gives the character a mystique (and speaking of Mystique, a silly character that shouldn't have been in the first film) and mystery, so why did they feel the need to create a backstory for the film adaptation, and why didn't the fans object to THAT in the same way that Judge Dredd fans rightly objected to the helmet coming off in the 1995 debacle...?

George Lucas made the prequels.

Go Joe, the problem with the prequels in five simple words!

$20m according to Wikipedia. Still, you'd think it would've looked better, considering that pretty much all of their costumes and props were already built and paid for.

$9m according to IMDB (which sounds more like it, judging from the production quality of ST3), which one should you go with there, radiator dude?

I echo the sentiments expressed here, good luck, God bless, and take care dude...

Fonky dude (or is it Scott...again!?), if you insult other people on the forum, you're gonna get some blowback, take it easy dude, drop the attitude, and we'll all get along... now, in answer to this thread's title, with a HELL of a lot of paper, 'nuff said...