I see some arguments going back and forth which series was the greatest, so I’ll pitch in,
TNG was in my opinion the best despite being episodic.
The whole idea of Star Trek was not to tell a story of diplomacy, mystery and action in space, but to explore societal questions on the basis that the world is already a utopian society, so it would act as guide for it’s viewers.
Both TOS and TNG did this to the tee.
It’s slogan “To boldly go where no one has gone before” was meant as a double entendre,
letting the viewer think that the show was about exploring space and new worlds,
but in reality, it was about exploring societal questions
and trying to offer solutions to them, without giving direct answers.
Questions like:
How should a utopian society treat robots like human beings if they become intelligent enough?
How should a utopian society deal with underdeveloped planets? Make contact? Leave them alone?
Are a bit fantastic, especially in those decades, but they were meant to get people to think and nudge in a humanitarian and socialist direction that could be applied to the real world in their time and their past behavior.
This is something that got gradually lost through every new series starting with DS9.
While I think the premise of DS9 was better on the surface than TNG,
which is to ask question about how a utopian society would deal with much tougher questions like, how does a utopian society deal with wars, terrorism and religious zealots?
And what if that religion of the religious zealots is based on incomprehensible advanced aliens?
All great, but the problem I have with the show are it’s villains.
The Cardissians and the Dominion did not challenge the United Federation of Planets
or UFP (read: the USA) in any way, other than in a test of strength kind of fashion, when the whole series was built upon examining societal issues.
Voyager wanted to bring things back to basics,
but also tried something new by bringing two disparate groups together,
and then decided that the non-utopian terrorist group could get along just fine,
with the utopian group after only two episodes.
It then retreaded TNG societal explorations without any significant leaps in special effects or make-up that the previous series had.
The whole series felt like it was stuck somewhere between TOS and TNG, rather than the move forward of DS9.
The new aliens also felt more like a throwback to TNG with it’s uglier than Cardassians rubber forehead designs. And I already thought the Cardassians were less fun to look at than the klingons or Romulans.
The two alien species that I kept seeing on TV when the show was running, I can only describe as asbesto-heads and the most boring version of of human reptiles, which they previously kept to one episode of DS9 and TNG because too much rubber makes it difficult to read faces.
Then when they started to lose viewers, they tried to make up for their mistakes by removing what I considered the cutie of the show and replaced her with “the babe”. And I wasn’t impressed with “the babe”.
She is apparently very sexy to many, but to me she came across as cold and calculative, more robot than human and the whole short-haired, thick-lipped, large-breasted, blonde model, I would even say having a natural bimbo look, to me only accentuated her personality of being a robot, not human sexiness.
I felt she fully contrasted with the “Hey, if you think robots should be treated like people, what about holographic computer programs” doctor. And he was a middle-aged bald man that was supposed to be a side character.
And then enterprise happened, which was the show that made me really lose interest.
Not STD or Picard.
Enterprise simply opened with their theme song
“UFP = USA and don’t you forget that.
It’s not a utopian society from the future.
It’s the USA.
USA USA USA”
Ah, so the utopian society is now thoroughly based on a country that started with slave owners on stolen land whose idea of freedom is foregoing to pay taxes.
STD and Picard, from what I’ve seen, simply went off the rails of the main goal of the show:
Showing what a utopian society would do with societal issues in order to act as a guide to it’s viewers.
They killed the utopian society and went for misery, drama and despair.
End of story.
That leaves Star Trek TOS and TNG to choose from.
I may be biased having seen TNG first,
but seeing the crew of TOS, I’m a bit taken aback by their captain.
He seems more like a boy’s fantasy of what a boy would act as the hero in a space adventure,
who happens to be captain of a ship,
rather than a boy’s fantasy of what his father/mother would act like as a leader of his crew/household.
And that’s something Voyager did as well with Janeway, DS9 did with Sisko albeit not enough in my opinion. While we would see Sisko from the crew’s perspective, there’s a lot of flashbacks and dream states happening to the captain where we all get to see his perspective and his perspective alone, giving the viewer the feeling of Sisko being an extension of themselves as a parent or an explorer, rather than an extension of their guide or their own sense of leadership and wisdom.
But that’s minor compared to Kirk.
Out of the four captains, Kirks really stand out as the odd one out.
I see some arguments going back and forth which series was the greatest, so I’ll pitch in,
TNG was in my opinion the best despite being episodic.
The whole idea of Star Trek was not to tell a story of diplomacy, mystery and action in space, but to explore societal questions on the basis that the world is already a utopian society, so it would act as guide for it’s viewers.
Both TOS and TNG did this to the tee.
It’s slogan “To boldly go where no one has gone before” was meant as a double entendre,
letting the viewer think that the show was about exploring space and new worlds,
but in reality, it was about exploring societal questions
and trying to offer solutions to them, without giving direct answers.
Questions like:
Are a bit fantastic, especially in those decades, but they were meant to get people to think and nudge in a humanitarian and socialist direction that could be applied to the real world in their time and their past behavior.
This is something that got gradually lost through every new series starting with DS9.
While I think the premise of DS9 was better on the surface than TNG,
which is to ask question about how a utopian society would deal with much tougher questions like, how does a utopian society deal with wars, terrorism and religious zealots?
And what if that religion of the religious zealots is based on incomprehensible advanced aliens?
All great, but the problem I have with the show are it’s villains.
The Cardissians and the Dominion did not challenge the United Federation of Planets or UFP (read: the USA) in any way, other than in a test of strength kind of fashion, when the whole series was built upon examining societal issues.
Voyager wanted to bring things back to basics,
but also tried something new by bringing two disparate groups together,
and then decided that the non-utopian terrorist group could get along just fine,
with the utopian group after only two episodes.
It then retreaded TNG societal explorations without any significant leaps in special effects or make-up that the previous series had.
The whole series felt like it was stuck somewhere between TOS and TNG, rather than the move forward of DS9.
The new aliens also felt more like a throwback to TNG with it’s uglier than Cardassians rubber forehead designs. And I already thought the Cardassians were less fun to look at than the klingons or Romulans.
The two alien species that I kept seeing on TV when the show was running, I can only describe as asbesto-heads and the most boring version of of human reptiles, which they previously kept to one episode of DS9 and TNG because too much rubber makes it difficult to read faces.
Then when they started to lose viewers, they tried to make up for their mistakes by removing what I considered the cutie of the show and replaced her with “the babe”. And I wasn’t impressed with “the babe”.
She is apparently very sexy to many, but to me she came across as cold and calculative, more robot than human and the whole short-haired, thick-lipped, large-breasted, blonde model, I would even say having a natural bimbo look, to me only accentuated her personality of being a robot, not human sexiness.
I felt she fully contrasted with the “Hey, if you think robots should be treated like people, what about holographic computer programs” doctor. And he was a middle-aged bald man that was supposed to be a side character.
And then enterprise happened, which was the show that made me really lose interest.
Not STD or Picard.
Enterprise simply opened with their theme song
“UFP = USA and don’t you forget that.
It’s not a utopian society from the future.
It’s the USA.
USA USA USA”
Ah, so the utopian society is now thoroughly based on a country that started with slave owners on stolen land whose idea of freedom is foregoing to pay taxes.
STD and Picard, from what I’ve seen, simply went off the rails of the main goal of the show:
Showing what a utopian society would do with societal issues in order to act as a guide to it’s viewers.
They killed the utopian society and went for misery, drama and despair.
End of story.
That leaves Star Trek TOS and TNG to choose from.
I may be biased having seen TNG first,
but seeing the crew of TOS, I’m a bit taken aback by their captain.
He seems more like a boy’s fantasy of what a boy would act as the hero in a space adventure,
who happens to be captain of a ship,
rather than a boy’s fantasy of what his father/mother would act like as a leader of his crew/household.
And that’s something Voyager did as well with Janeway, DS9 did with Sisko albeit not enough in my opinion. While we would see Sisko from the crew’s perspective, there’s a lot of flashbacks and dream states happening to the captain where we all get to see his perspective and his perspective alone, giving the viewer the feeling of Sisko being an extension of themselves as a parent or an explorer, rather than an extension of their guide or their own sense of leadership and wisdom.
But that’s minor compared to Kirk.
Out of the four captains, Kirks really stand out as the odd one out.