Anyone here a fan of Star Trek?

I'm old enough to have watched the original series on TV when I was a kid. I loved that show.

Then the first movie came out and it was kind of a letdown. Looked great, but the pacing was glacial slow. The next several movies were really good, "Wrath of Khan", "Search for Spock", "The Voyage Home". Then the quality of the scripts started nosediving.

I don't understand the praise for the TV series, Star Trek: The Next Generation. Almost all stories had a heavy-handed moral message, usually politically correct, which I referred to as "Star Trek Church" because it was basically a sermon on humanism. Other things wrong with TNG were the constant relying on Wesley as the hero (esp. in Season 1), the overuse of the holodeck as a Macguffin, and too many stories based on the magical powers of Q. Capt. Jean-Luc Picard was too timid, and favored diplomacy over action. That doesn't lend itself well for an action-based TV show.

Though watchable, TNG is overrated, IMO.

Star Trek Deep Space 9 was actually a worthy follow-on series. I watched it through about S5, I believe. Though the scope of the stories were somewhat hampered by them being (mostly) set in the same permanent space port, there was a lot of action, political intrigue, interesting characters, and an overarching plot of the war between the Cardassians and the Bajorans. There were consequences for the actions the characters took and they were complex.

Star Trek Voyager just shouldn't have been made. I thought it was terrible.

Though I liked Captain Archer's character Star Trek: Enterprise should never have seen the light of day. I give it high marks for the best opening and theme song montage in the canon.

Star Trek: Discovery. I don't know enough about it. I saw the first three episodes and then dropped it. It was changing the entire backstory of TOS and I didn't like that. At the time I quit watching it, they had just discovered they could instantly transport themselves across vast distances in space using some sort of plant-based DNA. The scientific hand-waving explaining this knocked over a La-Z-Boy recliner in my living room.

 

Big time, seen every show made, except for very latest one, as will not pay to get CBS all access just for that!

 

I would like to say that Babylon 5 was the best TV sci-fi show of the past 25 years.

 

Good, but ST next gen was better!

 

I watched the Next Generation in my younger days.

 

I did love the bickering between Q and the captian, just wished Q would have one time gave Picard a big afro!

 

No way, Firefly.

Y'all seen the first episode of Picard? I thought it was pretty good.

 

Not a true fan of Star Trek, but I do know of 3 episodes in the original series which have grabbed my interest before.

One is "Shore Leave," where after beaming down to an 'earth-like' planet supposedly without animal life, they encounter some surprises (animals and familiar people) and finally tragedies, to find out near the end that it is a playground where one can come to live out his fantasies by just thinking of them. But, of course, since they were inevitably thinking of their ship, the Enterprise, why didn't a mock-up of it appear? also the crewmen/women they were talking about?

The next is "Who Weeps for Adonis?" in which the Greek god Apollo abducts the crew, intending to force them to shepherd his flocks and worship him, as their ancestors did thousands of years before on earth. An ancient aliens theme? Maybe, but the greater point I get is that Apollo was chosen as the particular god, while the rest of them have abandoned the idea of being "gods" to earth people. This was in 1967, after (I think) the Apollo 1 tragedy put the moon program back several months and a few hundred million. It could be saying, more than an ancient astronaut theory, that we can't sell ourselves out completely to Apollo [moon landings] or we'll be enslaved in perpetuity to 'him.'

And the third one is "Spectre of the Gun." Being a western fan, I am drawn to this look back the OK Corrall gunfight, which in this case was arranged by an envoy of an isolated civilization who 'looked back' in their minds for a way to kill them for trespassing, and chose to make the party of 5 the Clanton Gang, who will get killed by the Earps in a replay of history, which cannot be changed (in spite of how much they've already changed it by the time the plot is discovered). The solution is found by Spock, who tells them it is all only an illusion, and they cannot be killed by the Earps' ammo as long they don't believe they can. An illusion?-- how great! You mean they didn't really go to earth and dig up all those guys and bring them back in a minute? But at the end Spock asks Captain Kirk if he really wanted to kill Wyatt Earp, which he indicated by assaulting him and pointing a gun at him. Kirk admits he did, but that humanity survived by overcoming its instinct for violence. Well, OK Corrall! Except why would Spock imply judgment against Kirk for wanting to kill what Spock was able to convince Kirk did not really exist anyway? That is illogical!

 

Not really, but I love The Next Generation.

 

I feel the same way about TNG. The perfect socialist society in which everyone loved his fellow man and there was no longer a need for money. That always made me chuckle.

Wesley was the inspiration for Laredo on the spoof movie "Galaxy Quest." That was a funny, funny movie. If TNG only gave us Galaxy Quest, then it was tolerable.

Never give up! Never Surrender!

 

Patrick Stewart now looks totally prof X!

 

I did enjoy Firefly, but it was mostly "pirates in space" or "con men on the run" and not so much sci-fi.

Yes, it was great. I saw the episode free on Pluto TV. I might have to pick up CBS All Access to watch the rest of the series.