Best Star Trek Series

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Enterprise had soooo much potential...until they actually made it.

New Series in 2017

Only 13 months to go. I read so many comments about how this should by like TNG or TOS and how it should stick to instrumentals for its opening. That's a really great way to end up disappointed. I think I'll be happy to see new episodes regardless, unless the show does something really crazy like letting Tarantino produce it.

Fans will complain about every aspect of it no matter what. I recently read a comment online: "Nobody hates Star Trek more than Star Trek fans." Sadly true. I'm ashamed of my fellow fans sometimes.

That's debatable given both the fact that much of the hate that Trek fans lashed out with was due to morons screaming about Enterprise as well as the massive hate boner many Star Wars fanatics have toward everything Star Trek. Being a fan of both franchises can really be a pain sometimes.

I like TNG and DS9 best.

Enterprise was pretty good, but not a Voyager fan.

Incidentally I DETEST the new movies by JJ Abrams. But I think the new Star Trek: Axanar will be such a success that the Abrams verse will have to react in the following movies to return to original Star Trek production and plotting values. Believe me, everything about this fan film is first class and is what for me REAL Star Trek is about.

That and let's face it, the ST universe has had far too many shows post-roddenberry that existed as a product instead of a vehicle for social change. He had a vision of what he wanted the future to look like. Too many of the shows since have had as their vision little more than a full bank account. Usually in the Cayman islands under a corporate account. Back in the day GB actually had a tense relationship with his studio & I think that difference shows. His goal was to normalize relationships - friendly or romantic - between human "races", various sexes & genders and even sentient, human-like species. He examined what it meant to be a person, in much the same way Asimov tended to do. I don't see so much of that anymore, you know?

TNG would be my winner overall.

Never watched Enterprise though.

One of the things in particular I favoured with regards to DS9 is the fallibility of the main staff. For instance, how many times did Sisko screw up or generally go loopy? Several times if I'm not mistaken.

When Dax was killed off and Sisko packed his bags and went home...that's exactly the kind of "normal" response to stress and grief I'd expect to see.

These things happen to a human neurology. It's the way it is. We get stressed out and we bail. Even if maybe the whole damn galaxy depended on us and us alone for survival it's 5hit out of luck...When we're done...we're done. We go home. Just because nobody else is around to carry the torch doesn't mean we can push ourselves any harder just because we're "expected too" or even because we expect ourselves too. It doesn't work that way. It's plain and simply a neurological impossibility that can not always be overcome and DS9 wasn't afraid to say it.

That "human perfection" schtiq we see in TNG is the only thing about it that really irks me. Nobody makes mistakes in TNG, nobody screws up in TNG, everybody is frakkin' well perfect unless they're comic relief (broccoli) and nobody ever loses their marbles unless, of course, some "evil alien" is behind it.

In TNG, humanity is just out there showing all them dumb stupid aliens that they better bow down before the master race.

Ugh, can't stand that. Yech.

So kudos to DS9 for putting the main characters under some pressure and having them actually break occasionally rather than being unrealistic comic superhero's who will always save the day after 45 minutes without fail. Every time. No suspense to worry about.

There's an immense cost to even trying to be a "good guy". Even the "big bad's" lost their marbles occasionally in DS9. Life is easy when all you do is destroy and parasite and not have to experience any guilt over it. Something else DS9 was willing to throw out there.

One of the loose threads that went twindling in DS9, and this immensely bothered me, was the members of the Jem'Hadar who tried to wean themselves from the Ketresel White and become autonomous individuals. It was very much a mirror of the TNG episode where the Borg broke their connection with the collective.

I was really gunning for some of the Jem'Hadar to be able to overcome their enslavement to The White and to the Dominion. I kept expecting an episode where either rebel Jem'Hadar would turn up - probably as a sacrificial Deus ex Machina SNORE - or maybe Julian came up with a means of freeing the Jem'Hadar's dependence upon the White which could lead to undercover missions attempting to create rebel factions within the Dominion itself...None of that happened and I really believed the Jem'Hadar were intrinsically honourable enough that they deserved the chance to emancipate themselves and form their own opinions about how things ought to be.

Ultimately, why I favour TNG, despite them pushing the "human perfection" angle to the point of nausea is actually that very point...TNG tried to create a new "religion" if you will, an attempt to encourage human's to become something better as a species. A "betterance" that relied upon real science, intelligence and a will to achieve a less wilfully destructive presence upon their reality.

These things are not impossible. Science has real solutions to real problems.

Science, with the attributes of decent hearts, hands and minds can be carried out and achieved and the human species could become something beyond a cancer and parasite upon a planet and perhaps even the galaxy itself, and I do respect TNG for trying to give humanity that little bit of hope, even if I had to lose my breakfast a few times to experience it.

TNG
DS9
Voyager
Original
Enterprise

While this is true a lot of that also has to do with the fact that Roddenberry had seriously lost touch with how television worked even in the 80s. The only reason TNG lasted as long as it did was because the showrunners kicked him upstairs so he wasn't constantly interfering with the plots and trying to turn them into cheesy 60s plotlines. What the writers of Star Trek realized is that while you can make a series a vehicle for social change, it is a very tricky road to travel and Star Trek more often than not fell into the annoying category if they tried to do it. They learned that you could condense the vehicle for change concept into very meaningful episodes and in fact in most of the modern series those episodes tended to be the best episodes in any given season of said show. If you try to do it constantly the message loses its impact as people start to get sick of it.

That's a very good point, I remember reading that it was a conscious decision by Roddenberry that the TNG crew would be unrealistically perfect, which ironically is the one thing that TNG always gets criticised for.

I don't really agree that 'Nobody hates Star Trek more than its own fans'... I think that is much more true of Star Wars fans, I have never seen any hate in the Trek fandom to compare with the hatred the vast majority of Star Wars fans have for the infamous prequels. There is a lot of hate for the JJ Abrams Star Trek movies, which I can understand, but I don't think that is anywhere near the level of hate directed at the prequels.

I can't decide. I like all of them. I've always been partial to Data.
The exception was the animated series. Never really watched it, I have no opinion.

I personally liked the Next Generation the best, followed by the original series. I didn't care much for Deep Space Nine or Voyager that much, but I don't dislike them. I've never watched Entreprise (heard good things about it however) or the animated series.

Picard is my favorite captain.

Is there a ST fan on the spectrum who *doesn't* have some affinity to Data? He's one of us!

I always viewed the captains as each having their own role.

Kirk: Generalist, was really good at finding the middle ground and easily had some skill in a bit of everything in order to do so. Unfortunately he had real problems with womanizing and tended to make stupid decisions when he didn't have the rest of the power trio to give the extreme options so he could pick the middle ground most of the time.

Picard: Diplomat, was very good when he was able to plan out encounters or had prior information he could use, but not so good on the off the cuff stuff, and by that I mean the major emergencies. The usual space wedgie was something he was good at stalling around until he or the crew could find a solution.

Sisko: Warrior was easily one of the most combat experienced and more than willing to lead by example in those situations. He also had the rare ability to walk the moral line when necessary. His two big problems were that he wasn't much of a people person and he did have a tendency to stray toward self righteousness and more extreme responses than he should have at times.

Janeway: Scientist, easily capable of handling the weird stuff when it came her way. So much so that the writer's tried to avoid the usual anomaly type disasters because she would eat them for breakfast. She was surprisingly also decent at building coalitions when she wanted to. She was easily the most empathetic of the captains what with her taking some problem ensigns under her wing. Her biggest issue however was her tendency to either really like or absolutely hate someone or something. There was no middle ground with her and that made her a loose cannon compared to Chakotay at times.

Archer: Explorer. While all of the captains had that explorer's spirit Archer seemed to represent it in its purest form. For him exploring the galaxy came down to one simple reason: Because it's there. He was also much like Kirk something of a jack of all trades, but where Kirk did have his focuses, Archer tended to suffer the master of none problem more so than any other captain.

I really like Reginald Barclay, he was a recurring character on TNG and the later seasons of Voyager. He is possibly the most accurate depiction of AS I have seen on TV (admittedly I don't watch much TV besides Star Trek), while still portraying him in a positive light, instead of as some kind of unnatural monster. I appreciated how he showed up in the later seasons of Voyager and ended up playing a major part in getting Voyager home.

TBH I can't say that I have an affinity for Data. I mean he's not a bad guy, but he's far too literal for my taste. (Like that scene in the TNG episode "Legacy" - Season 4 where Riker tells him to throw away the cards and he throws to the floor. Or when a comment was made about burning the midnight oil, and he talked about activating the fire suppress system which would seal off the compartment.) Too me that's just too literal, it makes him look more dumb than unfamiliar with expressions. I've never been that literal, nor can I relate to his lack of feelings.
I think social awkwardness in Star Trek was done far better with Seven of Nine and the EMH in Voyager. To me Data started as a blank slate while they both had more personality and to me their unfamiliarity with a lot of social situations was done in a way I personally could more readily relate to.

This Data scene is funny though:


and this one was done in a nicely sensitive way