The Babylon 5 model is very appropriate: stick with the show long enough and you will be drawn in.

As for the entire show on the station? That changes.

if you believe some trek fans, then enterprise sucks because it doesn't adhere to every detail of their view of trek "canon".

TOS - The classic. Frequently camp, never self-conscious, and stands at the top of the franchise now and forever.

TNG - laudable for bringing new generations (har har) into the Trek mythos, some great casting, some poor, mix of good and bad scripts.

DS9 - magnificent cast chemistry, some great stories in later seasons

Voyager - poor chemistry, poor acting (except for Robert Picardo as the Holographic Doctor), poor scripts, just plain poor.

Enterprise - getting better, slowly. Too little too late maybe?

That's not really why I dont like it. It's because of the lazy writing and poor characterizations but if you were making a prequel to one of the most popular Sci Fi shows ever dont you think you would want to adhere to some sort of continuity? If not, you could call it millions of other things. They want their cake and they want to eat it to. Use the name....Trek but then do whatever they want.

as good as TNG is, there is absolutely no comparison to TOS, nobody is a better captain than kirk, dont get me wrong picard is great but still no comparision, plus you cant replace spock

But believe me, they sure have tried. Poor imitations a plenty. Even Nimoy has said in interviews that Tvok was a a direct impression of Spock and in my opinion not a very good one at that.

That's what the last few shows have done is just recycle old themes and characters.

TNG and DS9 is so full of plot holes and story lines that conflict it doesn't matter how much liberties B&B took with enterprise.

Star Trek is a nice fun show. Plots are developed around actors' contracts and a budget, not to present any type of realistic view of the future or a military organization.

So it sounds like we're in agreement:

* Old School Trek -
An all time classic for the ages.

* The Animated Series -
Pretty solid writing held back by the fact that it was a low budget "kids show"

* TNG -
It had some good moments, mostly around the 3rd-5th season. The show took a noticable plunge in quality once Roddenberry died.

* DS9 - Started out very weak, got better as the show ran. Still a pale copy of B5.

* Gilligan's Trek - There's only one good point (well, TWO good points) to the show: Jeri Ryan

* Enterprise - Forum filters now allow me to gratuitusly use the word "fuck", and I shall do so now. This is the fucking fuckest fuckjob to fuck a fucker.

Didn't Babylon 5 premiere AFTER DS9? I seem to remember ignoring B5 when it came out b/c I chalked it up as a DS9 rip off... that said I wouldn't call DS9 a pale copy of B5.

Regardless, IMO TNG is the best Trek ever... but maybe b/c that's the first one I ever watched.

Babylon 5: 1994-1998 (with The Gathering in 1993)
Deep Space Nine: 1993-1999

They ran pretty much at the same time, but DS9 became more like Babylon 5 after the first few seasons (more political, serialized with long arcs etc.) I wouldn't say DS9 is a pale copy of B5 either, but I think the writers took some cues from B5's success (but I only think that--maybe they didn't even pay attention to B5).

tasha

Well, putting aside the who came first, or that both series are on a station, ect, ect - DS9 started to model itself on the story arc premise and resemble the show in tone. That's why I called it a johhny-come-lately, and not for any superficial trappings of the show.

While agree they are two good points with Jeri Ryan, my interest in the show went down even more when she came aboard. It went from a fairly even spread among the characters to the "7 of 9 show".

I'll agree (for the most part) with the rest.

I wouldn't call you qualified to make that call.

Ahh. I see the problem now.

You can't beat the best:

btw, if anyone can identify a Voyager episode for me that'd be cool. A while ago I was flipping the channels and just stumbled onto Voyager. I'd never watched it , said what the hell and decided to see how it was. The whole episode was centered on the Doctor. During the show he is presented with two injured/dying officers and must make a decision on which one to help, he can only help one. After he makes his decision and helps the officer, he is extremely troubled the rest of the episode because he made the choice based on his knowing the guy. He's disturbed by this realization because as a holographic doctor he was not programmed to come to decisions like these based on any kind of *personal* feelings for his subjects. It was a very talky episode but I remember thinking it was pretty darn good. If anyone knows, thanks.

I am so lucky that I wasn't drinking my soda when I read that, because my computer would now be dead.

IMHO, DS9 was the best becasue of the story arcs with TNG being just as good or even better for a couple seasons. I understand why people like TOS but I just find it too campy.

hmmm.. I guess I should have given DS9 more of a chance.

I stopped watching halfway through the first season.

I loved TNG and watching DS9 for me was hard because it seemed nothing ever happened.

I've been watching DS9 again now that Spike has been stripping it daily, and I'd forgotten just how good it got. Of course, the best aspects of it are blatantly influenced by Babylon 5, but DS9 did a good job of taking the B5 formula and making good Trek from it.

And yes, DS9 did premiere before B5, but JMS had shopped the B5 premise to Paramount before the PTEN consortium bought it, and then Paramount announced DS9 right after B5 was announced. There's a whole lot about this on the Lurker's Guide to B5. (Note that Joe always specifically stated he did not believe that the Trek producers had stolen the idea, just that he thought Paramount might have lead them to it.)

So did I but Because of good word of Mouth I started watching again after season 2. I am glad I did.
I didnt care for the whole religious aspect that it had during the first season but after taking off and not focusing so much on that it became much more interesting to me.

Here's a good place to start: http://www.tvtome.com/StarTrekVoyager/season1.html

I believe that episode is titled Latent Image. I have to agree with you about the episode though—it was one of the highlights during Voyager's tenure.

I just recently started watching TOS and find it to be fantastic - campy yet pretty clever.

Figured I should check out some of the movies. Watched 1 & 2, can't believe they're considered the same thing. The movies are so damn slick looking. I realize you can't make the movie as cheaply as the TV show, but I figured they'd at least realize one of the most endaring points of the original series.

I'm sure this is old news to fans, but I was quite disappointed.


My question - do Star Trek fans consider the movies to be their own entity? It sure is hard for me to, what with the same characters.

First few seasons are pretty slow, as with any trek series. On DS9 the good stuff starts at the end of season 2 when they meet the jem-hadar and kicks off in season 3 when they meet the founders of the dominion. Then the war starts that will last until the end of season 7.

Even with Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan?? How could ANYONE be disappointed with Wrath of Khan?

If I'm reading the point he's trying to make correctly, it sounds like he was more disappointed in how slick the movies are. They lost the "camp" factor that made the series so endearing.