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What's your favourite Star Trek series, films and characters?

Scalenex said:
My thought on Star Trek is that the Star Trek franchise is so big that there are parts of Star Trek that are brilliant and their parts of Star Trek that are garbage (though I do not believe Star Trek has any parts that are flaming garbage).

I believe none of the various branches of the Star Trek franchise are devoid of having some gems and none of them are devoid of having some abominations.

One thing I noticed is that one man's treasure is another man's trash applies to Star Trek.



I like the Star Trek plots that involve a lot of politics. Other people find the diplomatic stuff boring.

I happen to generally dislike the Star Trek episodes involving time travel, parallel universe, malfunctioning holo-decks or Q to be annoying. Other people tell me those are their favorite episodes. I like the episodes where the heroes have to defeat a villain or threat while suffering some weird affliction. Like the episode of DS9 when half the main cast was shrunk to the size of ants or the episode of Star Trek where half the main cast was turned into children.

I also like the heavy combat episodes.

Basically I'll watch any episode once. But I only circle back for a re-watch for certain episodes. Sometimes I'll re-watch an episode and skip to the good parts. Yay digital streaming.

I think time travel, parallel dimensions and Q are just lazy writing to try to come up with exotic things in space. If you happen to be a fan of Q, I will respect your opinion, but I am only giving my like button to Star Trek posts that do not praise Q.

The Original Series: I am going to give it props for being the first major sci-fi universe that was optimistic. And for their era their special effects was impressive and they were ahead of their time on fighting racism relatively speaking.

They were also perfect for their era of TV. If I watch one episode of this series per week, I am reasonably entertained, but I cannot binge watch this show. In small doses the corniness is endearing. In large doses it is annoying. Also, you can pretty much watch the episodes in random order and not really notice.

The original series movies are not able to hold my attention unless I'm watching with friends and we have agreed to heckle the movie. Then it's fun.

Watch Galaxy Quest. Whether you loved the original series or hated it, this is a good movie for anyone familiar with the old Star Trek.

The Animated Series: Never saw it. I've never met anyone who watched it who wasn't a HUGE Star Trek nerd.

The Next Generation: This is a better version of the original. The characters are a little bit less one dimensional and have better character arcs. Patrick Stewart is an amazing actor. I don't want to disparage the other actors (much) but Stewart's depiction of Picard elevated the entire show.

Like the original series the episodes were mostly self contained, but there was enough continuity to make it worth watching from beginning to end. I watched this on old fashioned TV during college, not through streaming so I missed an episode here or there while watching some episodes multiple times.

I found the movies disappointing but I couldn't answer why. I guess like they felt like mediocre Star Trek TNG episodes stretched to movie length. Mister Plinket, the greatest film critic of all time artfully ripped these into pieces.

Deep Space Nine: My favorite by far. I watched a few episodes on TV. Once I got Hulu I binge watched it straight through in a few weeks. Then I watched through it again later, skipping the few parts I didn't like.

Sisko, Kira, Garok, Gul Dukat, Nog, Odo, Worf, Dax, and Bashir all have fairly compelling character arcs. O'Brien didn't really have a character arc in that he starts and ends the series as basically the same person, but he does have interesting story plots. O'Brien gets the Scalenex Cup for suffering.

I could actually spew on DS9 for a long time, but I'll keep it short. I do think Gul Dukat is the greatest Star Trek villain ever. Maybe even the greatest villain of all television. An honorable mention to Kai Winn, who was also a fine villain. Gul Dukat was a great foil for his nemesis Sisko and Kai Winn was a great foil for her nemesis Kira.

And as I mentioned, I enjoy political plots and this story has lots of that. It was interesting to watch Bejor's freedom fighters have to become the Man. It was interesting to watch the Cardassian Union, Ferengni Alliance, and Klingon Empire evolve. Even the Federation grew and changed a bit. Sisko passed up a chance to reform the Trill homeworld in order to save Dax. One of the many reasons Dax was my least favorite character.

Again, I better keep my adoration for and criticisms of DS9 short. I have more criticisms of DS9 than the others but only because I love it more.

Voyager: I have barely seen any episodes of Voyager but I intend to remedy this.

Enterprise: No one I've met said anything good about this show. Note, few people have said the show was garbage. It seems meh. I don't have a strong desire to watch this, but I might give it a try because I have a Hulu subscription and Enterprise is available.

Discovery: I'm not paying for CBS All Access just to watch this. It's CBS. I don't want to pay money for CBS. I see there is a fierce debate on whether or not the show is good and it's done with all the politeness and peaceful decorum that permeates all Internet debates. The best critique I found, which I cannot seem to find again manages to hit the nail on the head for why there is such impassioned defenders and detractors. Discovery has skilled actors, skilled cinematography, nuanced plots, and modern special effects BUT Discovery has deviated from a lot of traditions of Star Trek. It's less optimistic. It's less familiar. So it's going to grind the gears of Star Trek fans.

Reminds of me of DC's new show Titans. The show has a compelling story and skilled actors but it doesn't really carry the spirit of the old Teen Titans cartoon that so many fans love.


Picard placates Q with inspiring speeches and Q keeps coming back. Sisko punched Q in the face.

"You hit me! Picard never hit me!"
"I'm not Picard."

Very useful for setting the tone of DS9 early. Picard is a natural diplomat who can take on a warrior's mantle if required. Sisko is a natural warrior who can take on a diplomat's mantle if required.

Also, despite Q saying the fact that Sisko was easier to provoke was "good for me." Q never bothered Sisko again. I also liked that he kept talking about Picard like a jealous spurned lover trying to pretend he is over the breakup. Add this to the pathetic-ness that pining after Picard's ex-girlfriend also showed an unhealthy obsession with Picard. He rarely spoke outside a whiny tone in that episode. I want to punch him in the face too.



Per above. Janeway was just his way of bargaining because she was a Picard-like figure. At least more Picard-like than Sisko.

I understand Captain Janeway managed to humiliate Q in one case tying him to a mast. Looking forward to it.

My favorite characters are Picard, then the entire cast of DS9 minus Dax. Then the entire cast of TNG minus the doctors, Westley, and the security chief who died. Then Dax who I actually didn't dislike, she just didn't hold up to her costars.

I have not seen enough Voyager to rank them, but I'm expecting I'll turn out liking some of them.

EDIT: One thing that interests me an aspiring writers is what happens as new writers take over. In the Original Series, Spock who is half-human/half Vulcan opted to act MORE Vulcan than the Vulcans to compensate for his half breed status. By the time Next Generation rolled around, each new writer made the Vulcans more Vulcan to the point where Spock was a wild renegade (at least comparatively).

Roddenberry helped create the concept of Ferenghi basically because he wanted a threatening alien that happened to be short of stature. He hadn't got much deeper than that. It's only after Roddenberry lost creative control then passed away that the Ferenghi evolved into being more nuanced and interesting.

Don't want to speak ill of the dead. Roddenbery was a creative genius. But every writer should welcome the input of others because every creative person has blind spots.
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I agree with SO much in that point, I'd like it twice if I could.

Man, I have to watch some Star Trek again...
 
I was talking with a friend about Star Trek yesterday and it occurred to me that nobody’s ever done a Law Enforcement centered Star Trek.

We got to discussing it, and all we could think of was:
  • Two penal colonies in TOS.
  • One (planetside) murder investigation conducted by Kirk (...for lack of a local Planetary PD?)
  • One murder investigation conducted in cooperation with locals (TOS) on Rigel-something, I think.
  • One death penalty case because Wesley stepped on a :rolleyes: space-geranium. (It wasn’t burning trash but Wheaton was left to play with matches...)
  • Odo On DS9.
  • And T’Pol cleaning up a Cold Case from her past.
The audience could really learn a lot about the Federation and its diplomacy with other non-member worlds using the vehicle of a Law Enforcement Procedural Star Trek. They investigate strange deaths, they chase alien criminals through system after system...
 
Let's see. Not in order, but the ones i like, for a reason or another

Series:
Deep Space Nine
Enterprise

Movies:
Wrath of Khan
The Voyage Home
First Contact
Star Trek 2009
Into Darkness
 
One season into Voyager and it's a fine show with an excellent cast of characters.

pendrake said:
Tuvok is a really good portrayal of a Vulcan...
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Indeed.

I like Deep Space Nine better but that's because I like political stories more than exploration.

I did look over some fan analysis of Star Trek Discovery. They recently released some behind the scenes. Basically all the creative team was only marginally aware of Star Trek before and not big fans. There were a lot of Rian Johnson type quotes about subverting expectations.

Different camera angles: Dynamic cinematography might actually be an improvement
New uniforms: okay, I don't see the harm
Dark lighting: okay, I'll overlook it
Less cohesion and discipline in Starfleet: okay, I'll overlook it
Want to make it more woke: Fine, it's current year, that's par for all media now.
Want to move it from an ensemble cast to a single character arc driven story: You are on thin ice....

They took the canon that Klingons have redundant organs (two hearts, four lungs) and extrapolated that Klingons have established that Klingons have double sets of genitalia now (males anyway, females are not explained). As far as I'm concerned that has killed Discovery. Not even Doctor Who would give an alien two penises. That's so crude I feel bad typing it on Lustria-Online, but I'm using the term in a purely medical sense.

That is not enough to kill the franchise, but I will never watch an episode of Discovery now. This wasn't an accident. Combined with show staff using variations of the phrase "This will bother the Trekkies but I think it will improve things for casual fans" too often.

It's one thing to make a mistake but I think the creative team for Discovery has contempt for the Star Trek source material.


Anyway, back to Voyager.

One thing I like is they subverted the trope that TNG and DS9 does all the time.

Captain: "How long will it take"
Engineer: "Eight Hours"
Captain: "You have three."

In Voyager the engineer "Look if I say it takes four hours I mean four hours"

Does anyone know how they justify composing most away missions from senior command level officers all the freaking time?


Janeway seems fickle to me, though from an outsiders view I can see she is fickle when the plot requires. Whenever the crew of Voyager fails to solve a problem by a narrow margin, I figure two episodes will help them completely solve the problem but they never stick around. If they cannot do it in less three days, they move on.

Episode 1, she violates the prime directive and refuses an opportunity to send the crew home to help a group of people by keeping super tech out of their enemies hand, but they don't bother to tell them "Oh by the way, your god is dead, and you are going to run out of supplies in five years. Better learn to be self-sufficent. Here's let me give you some Federation tech!"

Episode 14, they come really close to restoring a dead person from a war disaster with the implied possibility that the procedure could save thousands. They failed because they didn't have enough power. Instead of sticking around to try to boost the power or help the talaxians recreate the technology they flew away.
 
Scalenex said:
Does anyone know how they justify composing most away missions from senior command level officers all the freaking time?
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I think it was a bit of "back to the roots". Kirk and his guys did that all the time.


And without spoiling too much:
Janeway is.... sigh. Not a bad idea but she is a bit hit and miss over the seasons.
My main problem with her is that more and more episodes are about her and she does everything, while Chakotay basically becomes a minor character.
Also sometimes she is a bit.. torn between the Kirk-like badass action hero behaviour and the "mother of the ship" emotional women stereotype.

IMO some stuff gets better over time.
Some stuff however...changes. not always for the better.
 
Scalenex said:
Does anyone know how they justify composing most away missions from senior command level officers all the freaking time?
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Aginor said:
...it was a bit of "back to the roots". Kirk and his guys did that all the time.
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That is pretty easy to explain and rationalize: StarFleet does not do any such thing. But screenwriters sift through SF Logs and After Action Reports and make TV episodes out of the interesting ones. AARs that start with:

“Lt. Telvek and away team sent on survey mission to Class L planetoid Septimus Argo VII...” and end with “...nothing significant found. Details in Lt. Telvek’s logs.”

Those don’t make episodes. Ever. There are actually twenty such events to every TV episode.

There is one TOS episode that kinda started like that. Sulu was left commanding a Science Survey away mission. The transporter fouls up. Makes two Captains! (And two, spikey space-spaniels...) Now we have an episode! But, Transporter doesn’t do that? nothing much to report = no episode.

Aginor said:
Also sometimes she is a bit.. torn between the Kirk-like badass action hero behaviour and the "mother of the ship" emotional women stereotype.
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I guessed they were trying-struggling to make her a more well rounded, less Cardboard cut-out character than were Kirk or Picard?

Or failing-flailing at conveying how difficult it is to command a ship that is lost and out of contact with StarFleet HQ?
 
pendrake said:
I guessed they were trying-struggling to make her a more well rounded, less Cardboard cut-out character than were Kirk or Picard?
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Disagree with the thought about Picard there. IMO they showed a lot of facets of the character.
I am pretty sure Janeway's behaviour had out of universe reasons (different writers and ideas) but I guess you could just say in universe that she went insane by being so far away from home.
 
Aginor said:
Disagree with the thought about Picard there. IMO they showed a lot of facets of the character.
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They did.

Showed lots of facets. Good phrase. Consider that Picard’s core character never changes, it’s unwavering. Almost set-in-stone ...a stone with facets ...good analogy.

Maybe give them some credit? (with Janeway) for attempting to show a relatively young, less seasoned CO who is growing into the sort of officer that might oneday command a Capital Ship Class starship? (Voyager was basically a light cruiser...scout cruiser.)
 
pendrake said:
They did.

Showed lots of facets. Good phrase. Consider that Picard’s core character never changes, it’s unwavering. Almost set-in-stone ...a stone with facets ...good analogy.

Maybe give them some credit? (with Janeway) for attempting to show a relatively young, less seasoned CO who is growing into the sort of officer that might oneday command a Capital Ship Class starship? (Voyager was basically a light cruiser...scout cruiser.)
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Oh don't get me wrong, I do like some character traits of Janeway.
I just think they never decided on what to do with her. If there was a transition from one personality to the other I'd probably like it more, but the way they switch around makes it weird.



As for the Voyager: Same problem like Janeway, in a way:
The cool thing about the Voyager during the first two seasons or so (compared to the Enterprise) is:
If Picard's diplomacy fails he has the firepower of a battleship and the whole Starfleet behind him. The Voyager lacks the resources, the weapons, and the fleet. The only thing it can do well is run away and hide.
I liked that. It enforced better diplomacy and sometimes cutting a few corners.

But in the later seasons the action series characteristics begin to dominate Voyager. That's when Janeway makes her transition and so does the Voyager. Suddenly it felt like half the episode consisted of the Yoyager blowing up enemies left and right, and Janeway has one badass moment after the other. Only to suddenly snap back to the old "mother" role. To me it just felt a bit like schizophrenic and also arrogant sometimes.

I certainly don't hate the character, but to me that's where a lot of the Star Trek TNG spirit in Voyager got lost.
Although I admit that some of my favourite episodes are late ones. Just... I'd have loved to see more of Chakotay (for example) and less of Janeway in many of them.
 
Aginor said:
but to me that's where a lot of the Star Trek TNG spirit in Voyager got lost.
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Maybe that is the point. Being so far away from the federation and for so long will change a person and their crew. Their situation is unique so it would stand to reason that their adaptations over time would deviate from the norm. That is one of the things that Janeway wrestles with throughout the series.
 
I re-found the video that gave the most measured criticism of STD I ever found.



Unrelated edit. One thing DS9 and Voyager have that the predecessors didn't (Whoopi Goldberg doesn't really count, sorry) was a mostly friendly outsider working with Federation periodically providing direct commentary or an indirect foil against Starfleet.

DS9 had Quark and Garok.
Voyager had Kess and Neelix

They were very important support characters that elevated their whole shows in my opinion.
 
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Aginor said:
The abbreviation says it all.
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:hilarious:

Aginor said:
Ok that was mean, in fact I haven't seen a single episode. But I haven't heard a lot of good things about it either.
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I haven’t seen it either, but I was instantly put off by the way they did the Klingons from seeing them in the trailers - they look more like the Xindi-Reptilians from Enterprise than Klingons. I imagine both those races from the mainstream series would have an identity crisis when they see the Discovery Klingons...;)
 
pendrake said:
Those don’t make episodes. Ever. There are actually twenty such events to every TV episode.
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Did you know JK Rowling has an extremely in depth backstory to Dean Thomas. His father was a pureblood wizard who married a Muggle. The Death Eaters wanted to recruit him, so his father left his pregnant wife to keep the Death Eaters away from his family. Dean isn't actually a Muggle born.

Here's the thing though. If it is never mentioned on screen, it didn't happen! This ties in to my main problem with Voyager. That is the Continuity is a fickle monster.


One of the reasons I really Deep Space Nine is that things are changing all the time. Sometimes the Klingons are vicious enemies, sometimes they are trusted allies, sometimes they are uneasy allies, sometimes they are mercenary minded third wheels, sometimes they are red herrings, sometimes they are comic relief.

Yesterday's enemies are often tommorrow's allies. Stuff changes all the time. Characters come and go all the time. Voyager suffers from limitations of Continuity. First and foremost, much like Gilligan's Island, if they ever make it home, then the show is basically over. Second, it's very hard to introduce or remove characters. Unlike every other version of Star Trek where you can have recurring characters enter and leave all the time by getting on a space ship and flying away and back.

I actually started compiling a list but I guess it's not really up to me to review every episode of a nineties TV show (though if I spaced it out I could raise my post count AND fish for likes). Voyager's writers really twist things in knots to keep the cast constant.

At least one in three episodes, someone on Voyager befriends an alien that really has no reason not to join the Voyager crew.

1) Janeway is a very compassionate captain and this attitude trickles down to her crew. They should pick up lots of new people for humanitarian reasons.
2) Since Janeway and Tuvok considered using Voyager babies to replace fallen crew members on their decades long voyage, recruiting new adults make sense. They should pick up lots of new people for purely practical reasons.

Every time it looks like we are getting a new character, either they die at the last minute or a deus ex machina removes their reason for wanting to leave their planet at the last minute or one of the characters just suddenly acts wildly out of character. Without listing every single instance in season one and two, I think season two, episode one is the most glaring example.

The crew discovers that aliens abducted humans directly from Earth in 1937 to enslave them. The humans rebelled and now created a new society in the Delta Quandrant. Hundreds of thousands of humans. Then they unfreeze some 1937 humans from cryogenic stasis including Amelia Ehrhardt. Zero members of the Voyager crew asked to stay on the human colony. Zero members of the human colony, including Amelia Ehrhardt who lives for exploration chose to board on the Voyager.

Not only does it strike me as unrealistic that none of the 37s wanted to try to get back to Earth and none of the Voyager crew stuck space opted to find a home on a paradise planet with happy humans. But it would have been really cool to make stories about training new recruits, and adapting alien technology.

At the same time, Voyager also spits in the face of continuity. Season 2, episode 7 the crew's supply of food is so low that they risk hunting food on a dangerous planet nicknamed Planet Hell. They have an exciting story with great characterization, but they don't find any food. In episode 8, 9, 10, and 11 they have plenty of food and no explanation for the change of circumstances. They only seem to have supply problems when they writers need them to have supply problems because they ran out of more exciting plots.

It is famous in almost all Star Trek episodes that Starfleet captains are inconsistent on following the Prime Directive, but Janeway is more fickle than Picard and Sisko, though Kirk probably has her beat there.

What kind of bugs me is how Janeway and crew balance between exploration, trying to get home, and pursuing humanitarian interests. I feel like getting the crew home is not given enough priority. The rules change when you are off the edge of the map.
 
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My heart knew that Ben Sisko was the greatest Starfleet captain ever. My brain couldn't figure out why...until now.


Unrelated note. I find Dr. Bashir, the Holographic doctor on Voyager, and Dr. McCoy far more interesting characters than Dr. Crusher, but if I was sick, I would want Dr. Crusher to treat me. She is the only Star Trek doctor that has a reasonable bedside manner.
 
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Scalenex said:
Unrelated note. I find Dr. Bashir, the Holographic doctor on Voyager, and Dr. McCoy far more interesting characters than Dr. Crusher, but if I was sick, I would want Dr. Crusher to treat me. She is the only Star Trek doctor that has a reasonable bedside manner.
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I agree!
 
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