Red Dog

Well one can assume the Vulcans always knew and kept that information to themselves so as to not jeopardize their relations (still in the early stages) with Earth during the Earth-Romulan War. It's a shame that Enterprise never got to this point because it could have been quite interesting IMO.

Travis McClain

There has been a suggestion that what has happened is something like this:

From the original series through First Contact is (more or less) one timeline. After Picard's crew followed the Borg back in time, a somewhat new timeline emerged. Enterprise takes place in this sort of 1.1 timeline. Now, what's odd is that Nero and Spock traveled, apparently, from the 1.0 timeline backwards and sparked a 2.0 timeline. The 1.1 timeline in which Enterprise existed is still part of that 2.0 continuity.

Ergo, it is entirely plausible that the familiarity with Romulans was an outgrowth of the events between Enterprise and Star Trek. Geez, I feel like such a geek right now....

milo bloom

The familiarity with the Romulans came from the Kelvin's contact with Nero and his gang. Even though that was limited contact, they still gained the knowledge that they were Vulcanoids and then probably also pushed their intelligence gathering of the Romulans into overdrive thus gaining more info on them, including language. In our regular timeline, after the Romulan wars, there wasn't much contact.

And the episodes of ENT that used the Romulans showed the viewer their appearance, but nobody in the show knew what they looked like. I could see it being done on weekly basis very easily, just make sure no Romulan craft is ever taken intact.

And if you want to go into the novels, one of the ENT novels reveals the knowledge that they look like Vulcans, but only to a select few, and they agree to keep it quiet so as not to bruise the already fragile relationship with the Vulcans. I can even see someone in Section 31 over they years scrubbing that info for what reason so that info doesn't make it to Kirk-Prime's time.

Lone Wolf

I've been watching some TNG reruns lately and have a question.

dhmac

Instead of relying on my fuzzy memory, I'll use Memory Alpha instead. Here's their write-up:

superdeluxe

Oooh the battles waged over Canon on the trek boards on the net was just intense. I was like, really?

Josh-da-man

Count Dooku

I think you are over-estimating how interesting a bunch of space battles would be. Remember this is Star Trek, not the new BSG.

That was the thing about TOS and the establishment of The Canon.

When they made "Balance of Terror", they threw in that stuff about how no human had ever seen a Romulan --despite the fact that the two species had fought a war, so they could have that reveal, and that one crewman could get suspicious of Spock.
All throughout TOS, they threw in bits of historical and biographical information that served whatever episode they were making that week, and the later Trek shows (felt they) had to adhere to that stuff.
I'm sure they would have loved to have gotten the Romulans involved regularly on ENT, but they weren't going to be able to do that without Archer eventually coming face to face with one.

Another example of this is when Picard made a reference to the disasterous consequences of humans first contact with Klingons.
Then when ENT premiered, a lot of Trek fans were eager to see this played out. And all we got was that humans misunderstood Klingon culture and that Klingons were total assholes. Big deal.

Count Dooku

They established on ENT that a few Vulcans did know about their connection to the Romulans, but that information was in the hands of nefarious Vulcans that Archer helped get removed from power.

ENT further explains that Vulcan pulled back from their involvement with humans, and from exploring space in general, to focus their culture on its heritige and logic.
This sets the table for why over a century later, Spock serving in Star Fleet would be so unusual, and why humans would have so little knowledge of Vulcan culture.

Count Dooku

You're over-thinking it. This explanation is simple and logical enough:

Count Dooku

One of the things I loved so much about the new movie was that right from the outset they took one of the fundamental tenets of The Canon and blew it up, thus indicating that in this new time line anything was possible.

General Zod

So here's my ranking of ST .. For what it's worth:

Star Trek - Original Series: I put this first for originality and for the baseline it laid for all the rest of the shows. Just remember this was filmed in the 60's with a relatively low budget (even Lucille Ball didn't know what it was she was paying for). Some episodes are real stinkers but they did the best they could with what they had and they did an amazing job. "The Trouble with Tribbles" and "City on the Edge of Forever" are great episodes.

Star Trek - Deep Space 9: As others have said it takes a while to get into this one but once you do this series is just fantastic. Really good episodes like "Trials and Tribbleations" and "Duet" made it stand out. For me this was more about the characters than necessarily "Star Trek" - but it worked.

Star Trek - The Next Generation: If you throw the first season out the window this is a great series. The characters worked nicely together and there were some really strong episodes produced. "Darmok" and "The Inner Light" are probably the top 2 best episodes ever produced in trek and both for completely different reasons.. but they belong to TNG.

Star Trek - Voyager : This series took a while to get going but once it did it became pretty watchable. I agree with what some others have said that it didn't really start working until 7 of 9 came onto the show but once she did it added an interesting new dimension and saved what otherwise was a pretty lackluster series.

Star Trek - Enterprise: While my wife absolutely loved this series it never really worked for me. As a convention going, trivia answering, die-hard Trekkie I couldn't handle the sudden creation of Captain Archer, the Xindi, and an Enterprise that looked way more advanced than anything else that was to come along within the next 200 years. To me it just never really worked and the season long story arc with the Xindi just wasn't very good at all. It had some good character development but never got to warp speed.

Tracer Bullet

Indeed. I hope they continue to shock us in the subsequent movies.

I think I'd also like to see a TV series set in the new timeline, but I doubt that's at all likely.

Supermallet

OK, so here's my history with Star Trek:

When I was a kid, I was a huge Star Wars fan, but also a sci-fi fan in general. My dad showed me some TOS episodes, but I found them too cheesy to be taken seriously. My mother, on the other hand, started watching TNG and would let me stay up late to watch them with her. These I loved, and I can still remember having to wait to see what would happen after The Borg made Picard into Locutus. When DS9 premiered, I tried to watch it but couldn't get into it. Same with Voyager. Enterprise I didn't even check out until after it had been canceled and reruns were appearing on HDNet.

As I got older, I read more and more hard sci-fi, and started to see the shortcomings of the Star Wars films. The disappointing special editions and prequels didn't help on that score. But I found I was becoming more and more fond of Star Trek, especially the TOS films. So I picked up a cheap used copy of TOS season 1 on HD DVD and was surprised at how solid, sometimes even great, the episodes were. After seeing Star Trek (2009), and participating in the Star Trek Reverse Sheep games, I decided to catch up on TNG and DS9. Since the sets are still prohibitively expensive, I put both series in my Netflix queue and have been going through them three discs at a time, with the TNG movies mixed in. And I've been having a blast.

Of the series, I do think TNG is the best. The crew was so multi-faceted and interesting, and seasons 3-5 are just amazing television. Yes, it had its share of clunkers, but those were rarely outright bad, simply nothing special. And, of all the captains, I think Picard is the most interesting. A single storyline never went beyond two-parters, but given that the ship could travel the galaxy, it made sense. And of all the ships, I love the Enterprise-D design the best.

After that, TOS is a really fantastic series that holds plenty of surprises and treats, as long as you're willing to accept the 60's style and effects. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are the backbone of the entire Star Trek phenomenon, so TOS has plenty to enjoy.

When I originally watched Deep Space Nine, I was disappointed. It seemed slow and the characters weren't nearly as engaging as on Next Generation (despite Chief O'Brien getting more screentime). Watching it again, I'm sad I didn't stick with it for more than one season. Season one is quite like a weak season of TNG, except the station is stuck in one spot, so there wasn't even any space traveling to liven things up. And Sisko seems utterly uncharismatic. But, watching it further, the show really blossoms, and goes places no other Star Trek series ever did. The new Battlestar Galactica wouldn't exist if it weren't for this series. Plus DS9 has the best group of character actors as the guest/recurring characters.

It's amazing how quickly Star Trek went from great to crap. Voyager was a pathetic excuse for a Star Trek show, with unmemorable characters and poor scripts. Of course, that's nothing compared to the utter embarrassment that was Enterprise. From the cringe-inducing opening titles through to the poor attempts at re-writing Trek history while still staying true to canon, Enterprise was an utter failure from start to finish.

If you're willing to look past the 60's aesthetics of TOS, I'd say start there. If not, then give TNG and DS9 a shot.

Defiant1

Since you're a big BSG fan, I'd recommend DS9 like so many others have already said. BSG is the spiritual successor to DS9 in some ways as the two shows share a lot of behind the scenes crew, notably Ronald D. Moore. Both shows are also similar in their use of long story arcs involving war, secular/religious conflicts, and overall dark tone. While DS9 never gets as dark as BSG got (this is Star Trek after all), it goes to places that no other Trek series or movie would dare travel.

I would say that the first season and a half of DS9 is a bit slower-paced but once they start The Dominion storyline, it's full thrusters ahead. The thing though is that it's crucial to watch the complete series to really understand the overall story arc. A throwaway reference in a 2nd-season episode could have major ramifications four seasons later or a minor character in the pilot episode could become a core member of the cast later on. The characters on DS9 are by far the most well-developed of the various Trek series. Take Voyager, for example. Ensign Harry Kim, a main cast member, doesn't really change at all over the course of seven years which is preposterous considering all the crap his ship went through. Meanwhile, a recurring (RECURRING!) character on DS9 like Garak shows seemingly infinite shades of grey in his arc over seven seasons.

And for pure eye candy, none of the TV series (even VOY or ENT which aired after DS9) can match the sight of the HUGE fleet battles shown during the latter seasons. I'm talking hundreds of ships, weapons blazing, with our heroes right there in the thick of it fighting it out for the survival of the Federation.

bmasters1981

I have some of "Voyager" too, and I think that you described the way I've been with the DVD releases (I have 1, 3, and 4, but not 2, for obvious reasons). I haven't been going in order on them, because, as you said, it's best to look at the episodes you really enjoyed first. "Voyager" did have quite a few that I have enjoyed so far, including a few that, IIRC, were panned quite a bit-- "Macrocosm" and "Fair Trade" from season 3, and "Learning Curve" from season 1.

mikehunt

I've thought about the alternate timeline thing of the new movie a few times lately since re-watching the movie a few times and I actually think the 2.0 split happened prior to Nero's appearance. I hadn't thought about the 1.1 thing you mentioned so maybe my thought about the divergence happening prior to Nero can be based on that.
Your 1.1 idea is sound due to the appearance of .
The reason I think the timeline diverged prior to Nero is the Kelvin. It has twice the crew of the 1.0 NCC1701 which would seem to indicate it is bigger than the NCC1701, and although I don't think there is any canon reference one way or another I think it is generally assumed the Constitution class was the biggest starfleet class to date in the 1.0 timeline. Memory Alpha also has a reference that puts the length of the Kelvin at much more than the Constitution class
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/USS_Kelvin
Add in the Kelvin having the much different looking engine special effects and I argue that they were already in an alternate timeline prior to Nero popping out of the "lightning storm in space"