Mike86

The Menagerie is a good episode. At first it seems weird because you don’t know what Spock’s deal is or what he’s up to. It probably would be a bit of a confusing episode to some people without knowing the history of The Cage and that the show originally featured a different cast (aside from Spock). It is cool though how they were able to use the footage from The Cage and incorporate it into an episode.

Josh-da-man

Yeah, that's a great episode. Easily top-ten TNG on anyone's list.

Also, when people watch Picard, and complain about how Starfleet wouldn't be doing the shitty things they're shown to be doing, they seem to forget that in this classic episode, they came this >< close to declaring Data as non-sentient property.

And, hell, even on TOS, bureaucrats and Starfleet officials were often shown to be assholes.

BearFan

I generally like the new shows ... I liked the old shows (some more than others and all the series had some horrible episodes, some okay to good episodes, and some great episodes), I also like Orville, and as an added bonus generally like Star Wars.

milo bloom

There's a problem with the new shows that I read about during the TNG years that just continues to get worse. The show is being written by people that are just writers.

Remember, Roddenberry was a pilot, a cop, in the military, all that stuff. He had real life experiences to pull from to write his stories.
Over time, you started adding in people who were writers and just that - writers. They didn't have as much experience with other stuff to put into their writing.

Now, the industry has become insular and doesn't let people in from the outside, so you have this closed ecosystem of writers writing stories, and they're well structured and all that, but they're missing a spark that comes from having lived through something in real life.

Opening up script submissions to the public like they've done in the past, would go a long way towards helping some of these shows imho.

Red Dog

TOS will always be the best for me.

I never watched DS9 in its original run. Never thought I would like it. I did watch TNG in its original run, and enjoyed it very much. But after watching DS9 a few times over the last decade, I find it so far superior to TNG.

VOY never did anything for me. ENT had promise (the Xindi season was terrible) and thought the last season of it was pretty good.

The new stuff is just not Trek to me.

PatD

Seconded. However VOY and ENT look like Hugo and Nebula Award material compared to what has come after.

Mike86

Voyager was always my least favorite of the classic Star Trek shows. It’s not completely awful, and I do like it more than new Trek, but meh.

It’s like a lesser version of TNG with characters that aren’t as likable. There are some characters to like such as Seven of Nine, The Doctor, Tuvok, and Neelix.

I never really cared for Janeway or Chakotay. The show also was way too reliant on the Borg if you ask me.

BobO'Link

Isn't that a bit contradictory?

I absolutely dislike the Seven of Nine character and feel it dilutes the show with *too much Borg*. Outside the overuse of that half-baked, solely there for the T&A factor, character, the Borg in Voyager were handled much better than in TNG. The stories involving them were more believable and tense without falling into the "Who are the Borg going to assimilate this week" trap TNG overused. Every time they appear in TNG I feel like I'm watching a rewrite of the previous Borg episode. Not so with Voyager - well... outside Seven of Nine's constant angst that no one likes her. Once that character arrived the writers pretty much ignored much of the rest of the cast to the overall detriment of the show.

Mike86

I like Seven as a character because she’s interesting, but she brought about an over-reliance on the Borg.

PatD

When the Borg were introduced in Voyager, the show became EXPONENTIALLY less interesting. They had to a cram a Borg reference or appearance in *every* fricking episode of Voyager once Seven of Nine was added to the show. The Borg on Voyager were pretty pathetic and easily defeated in every encounter. They weren't the monolithic force that tore through a fleet of Federation starships with no problem.

Indeed, Deep Space Nine did a better job portraying the Borg in their one-time cameo in the series. There's no scene that comes anywhere close to this on Voyager:

milo bloom

Voyager was drastically improved by Seven of Nine's arrival. Not too long ago I wanted to rewatch some episodes and I started pre Seven and then watched her first eps (Scorpion) and it was so obvious that she was outclassing all the other actors except Robert Picardo. She and The Doctor felt like the only 3 dimensional characters on the whole show. The cast may have resented her for being a T&A spectacle, which she unfortunately was, but at the same time she was a better actress and a better written character.

I hate that they had to lose Kes to gain her. I wonder what kind of stories they could have made with those two comparing notes on humanity.

PatD

Really? I thought the first 2 seasons of Voyager were the strongest. They didn't use the Borg as a crutch. They actually had to come up with adversaries of their own (like the Vidiians) and their plots were more centered around the show's premise. Was it stellar all the time? No. But, there are plenty of clever, compelling stories (I could name a quite a few) and it gave all the characters a chance to shine--before it became The Seven of Nine Show.

Bronkster

Tough choice for me. I grew up with TOS (being old enough to have watched it when it first aired ), but TNG - with seven seasons to fully develop - feels like the stronger of the two. So, I went with TNG. But I still watch both.

Josh-da-man

The Borg only appeared in four TNG stories.

They made their first appearance in "Q Who," where they were introduced as a nearly unstoppable threat.

They made their second appearance in "The Best of Both Worlds" when they openly attacked the Federation, assimilated Captain Picard, and were barely defeated.

They made their third appearance in "I, Borg," which was mostly limited to the moral dilemma of what to do with Hugh.

They made their fourth and final appearance in "Descent" when Lore found Hugh's breakaway cell of Borgs that were cut off from the collective, which was as much about Data and Lore as it was the Borg.

And they were all very different stories.

Mike86

Yeah, TNG made the best use of the Borg in my opinion. They were used sparingly but their appearances were all pretty memorable.

B5Erik

Babylon 5 is my all time favorite show, period. I love it.

But I also love Deep Space Nine. It's a great show, and my favorite Star Trek show. Of course, the fact that Paramount stole a whole lot of ideas from Straczynski for DS9 (after his B5 pitch to Paramount, which gave them his B5 show, "Bible," several full scripts, and plot outlines for several more episodes). It would have been hard for Paramount to screw up DS9 given the material they had to work with.

DS9 really is a great show, and it holds up really well 25 years later.


When TNG was good, it was great, but when it wasn't good it could be really bad. (The last season had some Godawful episodes - about 4 or 5 of them.)

TOS is classic, but very dated. Still, it's very entertaining and holds up pretty well.

Voyager was a clusterf*#k. They had a great concept, but the execution was bad.

Enterprise started off as such a mediocre, uninspiring show that I checked out midway through the first season. I hear it got better later on.

dhmac

Mike & Rich of Red Letter Media recently discussed their top 5 favorite Star Trek TNG episodes and their review is so entertaining that it alone almost made me switch my favorite series from TOS to TNG.

Part 1


Part 2

PatD

Did anyone watch Deep Space Nine and Voyager concurrently during their initial run in the 90s? They shared 5 seasons (1995-1999). I'd used to tape both of them while I was working and watch their respective episodes back-to-back. It was like freaking night and day! It felt like I was going to get the bends from such a disparity in quality of those two shows. (Like watching DS9's "In the Pale Moonlight" and VGR's "Demon" back-to-back for example)

B5Erik

I did for a while. I gave up on Voyager after the 4th season.

The two shows I looked forward to the most each week were Babylon 5 and DS9. (By the time B5 hit it's stride in year 2 TNG was slipping into mediocrity far too many times each season, until, during the last season, almost half the episodes were bad. DS9 was good during it's first two seasons, and kept getting better from there.)

Josh-da-man

Yeah, I was watching. I bailed on Voyager around the last half of the third season. Watched Deep Space Nine to the end.

BobO'Link

It sure felt like more and, to me, they all feel alike and run together - but I didn't watch TNG with any regularity after S1. Over the decades I'd catch an episode periodically and it always seemed like it was either a Borg, Q, or holodeck episode with a theme that felt like it belonged on another series - not a Trek one. I disliked all of those episodes I saw which featured the Borg, Q, and the holodeck (among others).

The only reason I continued S1 after "Encounter at Farpoint" was a hope that "Q" was a one shot antagonist and the rather cliche', rehashed feeling, episode was not typical. By the end of S1 I was so fed up with the Wesley Crusher character, the pointless death of Tasha Yar, and other issues, that I gave it a half dozen S2 episodes to see if things improved. IMHO things worsened with the addition of Whoopi Goldberg (and I still don't like her character) and Diana Muldaur (an actress I've never liked) replacing Gates McFadden (which I could have accepted had the Wesley character left with her). I also didn't care for the characters Data or Will Riker and felt Deanna Troi was rather superfluous. There were more things I disliked than enjoyed so I bailed.

I only saw the series in its entirety a year or so back when I caved and purchased a BR set (UK, region free, at an excellent price) to complete my Trek collection. Overall I found it mostly OK but until Discovery came out it was at the bottom of my Trek list. Now it's next to last. If I were to go through and cherry pick episodes I truly enjoyed I think I could get between 2 and 3 season's worth. I'll eventually rewatch the entire series but am in no hurry.

Mike86

I think we can all admit that season one of TNG is rocky. The second season still has some bumps, but it improves and there are some classic episodes. Seasons three through five is the show in its prime. Seasons six and seven are still very good, but not as good as three through five.

lisadoris

I did then and I'm dong it now (1 disc of DS9 then 1 disc of VOY).

PatD

If you want to get the full, authentic first-run effect, watch DS9 by itself for the first 2.3 seasons by itself and then when it hits 1995 watch the remainder of season 3 of DS9 and season 1 of VGR. Sorry, I'm a total nerd.

BobO'Link

I did - DS9 live (Saturday at 10:30pm) and I taped the Voyager satellite feed at work to watch later at home (no one in this area carried it and it wasn't on any available cable channels). I worked at a TV station at the time and was in charge of the "record calendar." They aired DS9 (and had aired TNG - For S1 and a half dozen S2 episodes I edited out the commercials before dubbing it to VHS) but didn't air Voyager. I put it on the calendar anyway to record on VHS for me and made sure there were tapes available on the day it came down. I did that until I left broadcasting in late 1999. It wasn't until DVDs of the series came out and I purchased copies that I finally saw how it ended. I should have edited down DS9 for dubbing to VHS but after wasting all that time doing it for TNG I just didn't have the heart, even though I liked that DS9 much better. I didn't keep any of those TNG tapes and reused the ones for Voyager after watching the episode each week.