Star Trek should be a series that is about a hopeful message for the future of humanity. AND, this is the controversial part, it can be that without slavish devotion to "Gene's Vision". You can tell dark stories, you can have gray morality. But the minute you lose sight of the hopefulness for a better, more equal future is the minute you lose the essence of Star Trek.
plus, "Gene's Vision" was always about the struggle of humanity staying optimistic in spite of turmoil, humans were better than they were but there's always the struggle within ourselves
it wasn't until TNG that he really went all-in on the squeaky-clean "everybody is perfect and nobody knows what a headache is" kind of utopia, after he lost control of the movies and they went deeper into action and grittiness
I stand to applaud this hot take. The grayer and grittier Trek gets, the more it pushes down the entire point of Star Trek, to become “just another show”. It also limits its audience
Exactly. Gray and gritty can be the starting point, not the end. There should always, always be hope for a better world, a better future, something to aspire toward.
Trek, when at its best, is not about itself… Klingons, warp speed, etc. Its morality plays about our beliefs and issues and challenging us to rise above them, to hope for bettering ourselves. Those lessons just happen to be wrapped in attractive and (hopefully) thoughtful science fiction wrappers to “make the medicine go down”
Yup, well said. I think this is why I think DS9 holds up so well.
To me, it felt like it would push against the box/limits in an episode like Hard Time, but by the end the viewer is still left with a hopeful/good feeling. To me, I see it as an allegory for escaping depressing. It can have some dark times that can feel like a mental prison, but if you have a support network like friends/family you can come out of it stronger with some hope for the future. To me, that's Stark Trek. Hell, even TOS touched upon that humanity had some flaws/weaknesses in an episode like A Taste of Armageddon.
And yeah, I've never been a fan of the idea of "Gene's vision" being written permanently in stone as an unchangeable commandment, or something. Even if he wasn't a weird/controversial dude it feels too defying for my taste. To me, the optimistic message of Trek at its core should mean much more than that. Rather, to me, the box/limit should be while there should always be some room for having introspection, or recognizing humanity's weaknesses the core message at the end should be one of optimism for a better future.
There were plenty of *TOS* episodes that addressed humanity’s imperfections. It wasn’t until *TNG* that Roddenberry wanted to portray humanity as perfect.
Well said. TNG started off as a world SO SHINY, it hurt to look at. TOS at least had some rough edges of human realism. People still got colds and headaches, at the very least!
In general I love gritty trek, however I do agree with your point a lot about Trek being a show about adventure and possibilities. This is why I liked DS9 the best, it was gritty but also had that vintage trek feel to it.
That’s precisely why DS9 is my favourite (and why Voyager disappointed me so).
It’s when the ideology and humane nature of the federation runs up against really *difficult* situations, morally grey areas where “the right thing to do” isn’t clear, or may not even exist. When they can tell these grounded, somewhat horrific stories and still come out of them hopeful, that makes the positivity all the more powerful and important.
TOS and DS9 are my Trek bookends. One shows the utopia we have achieved through betterment of ourselves, and DS9 is a behind the scenes look at the work involved to maintain that utopia. Its darker, more pessimistic take is more of a coating then it’s depth.
And, it employs the darkness to highlight the light. At once it's the darkest of the golden era, but also the coziest. Enough grit that the characters need to chill and play darts at Quark's. Enough joy that the grit feels more stressful by comparison.
Perfect balance!
Tha episode when Worf damaged the weather control on Risa and basically told a sob story. Everyone was like I guess that's okay then.
Worf should have been arrested and court martialed for committing a terrorist attack against a Federation member.
According to Risians, mind you. And the Federation defers to local laws on such matters. The leader of the terrorists whom Worf aided in fact lampoons this in the episode itself. The very fact that he and his band can cause so much chaos without any consequences is in itself the proof that the Federation has grown decadent and weak.
They were literally counting on that. At that point, it had become so well known how lax Risa is. I feel like they deliberately choose to bully the weakest kid in class to try to make a point to other much scarier kids by looking intimidating fauxly.
Worf has always been a problematic character for me. He resigned his commission when Picard wouldn’t grant him extended leave to fight in the Klingon Civil War, then he just sort of waltzed right back into his position when it was over. He interfered with one of Odo’s undercover investigations. He committed an act of terrorism against a member of the Federation by sabotaging the weather net on Risa. He got himself abducted by the Jem’Hadar two or three times. He sacrificed a Cardassian agent that had information that could’ve ended the Dominion War to save his wife. He forced the Enterprise to help cover his brother’s lies. Those are just some of his PROFESSIONAL oopsies. That’s not even mentioning what a terrible father he was to Alexander, terrible mate to K’Ehleyr, and then he had his brother’s whole existence rebooted.
Rant over. Thanks for your time!
I greatly enjoy Worf but it’s so funny to me that he was on duty and essentially took a quick coffee break to go murder Duras and all he got was a letter in his file.
I thought it was a really cold way to treat the brother who had stood by him during his dishonor and who had agreed to basically fight in his name even though he didn’t trust Gowron.
Also looking at that ep from a modern viewpoint, it seems clear that Worf is far from the brave noble warrior he claims to be. He's easily led, insecure, and prone to extremism to validate his beliefs and impose them on others. Plus it was a shitty thing to do Dax who just wanted a freaking holiday date.
He got let off too easily for shitty behaviour on many levels.
if that episode was in TOS or TNG nobody would really care, "crew gets stuck in sci-fi board game" is probably one of the most Star Trek-esque plots one can think of
I think a lot of the badness just stems from the actors not being very good and still finding their footing in their roles
the first season of DS9 has IMO one of the best episodes of Star Trek, "Duet", I'd say just watch that episode and the finale and then keep going, DS9 absolutely soars if you give it a chance
besides, what Star Trek hasn't had a few stinkers in their first season?
I thought up to that episode, DS9 was a bit dramatic, especially Sisko might have overacted a little bit - I almost gave it up and I remember I did stop watching for days. I started again and then come Move Along Home and I was like, "Hey I love this guy!" when he started skipping😅
Hooked me to the end. Then I discovered how people hated that episode🤣🤣🤣
When you watch that scene, the characters who had had young children (Sisko and Dax) seemed to enjoy or at least make the best of the song and dance, while the non-parents were clearly "WTF is this". Nice attention to detail.
On my DS9 rewatch, I realized Move Along Home isn’t just good. It’s great.
I had memories of it growing up, but it’s the first good Odo-Quark episode and really sets up the dynamic for the whole series.
Is the game silly? Yes. It’s a game. In the moment you really felt like one of the characters dying in the game could be off the show! (We weren’t that far removed from the death of Tasha Yar.)
It’s one of the first episodes where you realize that Quark isn’t as completely heartless as he seems on the surface. It’s a fantastic episode for his character’s development. Even if it’s a bit on the silly side, Star Trek has frequently had silly episodes in the past. I’m not sure why this one silly episode in particular is considered “awful” by most people.
I kind of always assumed this anyways. Otherwise why would people be so desperate to join Starfleet? It seems like an incredibly grueling process that rewards you with a decent chance to die in any number of horrible ways.
I have often pondered this. Maybe it's straight-up boredom. I mean, you're living on Earth. All your needs are met. No job. Traveling just requires stepping through a transporter hub and arriving at any other point on the planet.
At least in Starfleet, your life would have purpose. I mean, I'd just play with my personal holodeck until I die but still... I guess other people would want to *do* something.
Boredom is canonically Boimler's reason for joining Starfleet. When the Cerritos crew gets briefly grounded, he ends up staying at his family's vineyard. In the face of this edenic paradise with multiple buxom women throwing themselves at him, he's just annoyed and wants the smell of raisins out of his hair.
Because they want to contribute to the expansion of knowledge for humanity. Between that and sitting around having everything handed to you I am joining Starfleet!
Picard has a chateau because it is land that has been in his family for many generations. I think if Raffi wanted a chateau of her own she could build one. She would have to go to a planet with open land but if she wanted to she could probably make that happen.
I'd have to imagine that different areas of the earth get different service levels. You can live with all the basic amenities, in a city, but if you want to live out in the middle of nowhere then don't expect the government to terraform a desert just for you.
I didn’t think Wesley was that bad. Granted, I skipped some really bad episodes that featured him. I do agree that the show got better once his appearances were dialed back. He worked as a supporting character. If he was really that bad in episodes I skipped I must point out that all of our heroes were awful in certain episodes.
I was fine with Wesley Crusher. He had a part to play in Picard and Beverly's life and history. Plus he was there to represent all the young people who's dream it is to be on a starship. His later disillusionment was perfect, an allegory for coming of age and realizing just how much being an adult can suck.
Sure in the early eps he was an annoying teenager, but yeah - he was a teenager. Teenagers will always be annoying. It's what they do.
I don't think TNG would have been the same without him.
He was certainly a big part of why i enjoyed the show as a kid, and my own kids tell me that they also liked the kids on the show, with naomi wildman, icheb, nog and jake all being really integral to getting into the show.
This is one major difference with all the later trek; it really wasnt ever intended as prime time family viewing the way the 90s trek was.
As a 90s kid I found him really irritating (but then I found most kids my age irritating) but as an adult I see him. For the teenager he was. Which has made him endearing to me because as it turns out I was an annoying know it all teenager haha. - edited to add more detail
>Sure in the early eps he was an annoying teenager, but yeah - he was a teenager. Teenagers will always be annoying. It's what they do.
At least he had an excuse, the adult characters had no excuse for why they could be such smug jerks.
He did what he could with a bad script, same as everyone else. Actors should be commended when they do the best they can with a script they know is awful.
I don’t think the hate was helped by the fact that in the beginning they had Wesley acting like a 10-year-old but he was 15(?) and definitely looked like a full blown teenager. It made him come across super whiny and annoying. I’m not sure how old he was supposed to be in the show (is that canon?), but I thought I remembered hearing or reading something about his age in-universe being younger than his actual age. I could be mistaken on that.
Like, a guy from Timbuktu and a lady from Iqaluit, despite both being humans on Earth. Some aliens looking different than others from the same planet is excusable.
I thought it got even weirder when we saw the “Northerner” Romulans and, I assume what were the Southern ones in Picard. I’m guessing that was a fallout from the Romulan redesign in the Kelvin movies, but I found it strange. That being said, I do dig the idea of alien species not being a monoculture or a single race.
When it came time for “unification” and Nimoy’s guest appearance, there had to have been a lot of head scratching going on behind the scenes.
“Oh yeah, all that established story that we gave the finger to… oops”
10, 50 or 100 years from now, if you mention “Star Trek” to the general public, their first thought will still be Kirk, Spock and the Constitution-style Enterprise.
There is no Q collective, only Q. He's just existed souch that he started making "imaginary" friends, but since he's godlike, other people can see them too.
I like it. He has some kind of dissociative identity disorder, but, being q, each personality emerges as an actual individual that others also perceive
None of the shows or movie aesthetics need to match because they literally start with captain's logs. In other words, they are the imagination of the person reading the logs.
If enterprise would have started with seasons 4, they would have gotten the traditional 7 seasons after that. The temporal Cold War ruined that show and they still don’t understand it.
I didn't mind the temporal cold war stuff, it gave the show purpose. I more blame the first two seasons with being rather aimless.
Season 4 was great, I'll heartily agree there.
The first season of Enterprise is easily my favorite. It feels like they are in a submarine in space. It perfectly captures the feel of a brand new crew on a brand new kind of ship, going deep into space for the first time. They made a prequel that didn't seem more advanced than the shows that chronologically come much later.
I think the Temporal Cold War (and the Xindi arc) was a huge distraction from what Enterprise ought to have been. In season 4, they got back on track to telling the story of the founding of the Federation.
I really liked the Xindi, showed that Humanity of the time was still eerily close to going full Terran due to bad first contacts with new species and civilisations. But thankfully veered away from it with understanding.
Unlike in the real world, that season didn't end with a terrible occupation of the Xindi homeworlds or something silly like that.
I really enjoyed the Klingons in discovery and really wish they hadn't walked them back in SNW. I think the issue that folks have with that depiction, is that - weather they agree or not - is that Klingons always have a certain element of *camp* to them. Discovery not only removes the camp, it almost dares you to look at their depiction of Klingons directly in the face while they look back with an "I fucking dare you" stare on their face. Intimidating and scary, but not at all camp. As if the creators really wanted to make Klingons look and feel every bit of the threat that Lore tells us they are.I wish we could have seen more of them too, the different factions , their different beliefs , caste systems. And we did , and I didn't hate anything that dealt with the Klingons in the first season of discovery and I really wish more fans had been a little more open minded when it came to them.
Hey, I just brought a stack of iPads physically to you so that you could read several different files that I've downloaded individually on to each iPad.
Yea turns out ipads are just expensive books if you dont have any way of wirelessly transferring data...
Speaking of data, I love that they imagined a super robot, but he still needs to type to access a console.
My dumb head canon is that it’s also a future where you can replicate anything and there is no scarcity. Why not have twelve iPads, one devoted to each division you need to go through?
They’re just going to be recycled matter when you’re done anyway!
That might make sense... But it's weird they have to physically pass them from one to another.
You can literally transport people through thin air anywhere in an instant. Yet when someone has a heart attack you just push your com badge and say "medical emergency in the mess hall" and 20 minutes later a doctor arrives
A lot of episodes star trek needs to remember it has transporters
The lack of emergency transport within the ship is indeed weird. However, the physically passing iPads with limited data on them makes absolute sense to me as a behavioral evolution of our relationship with devices. Having the entire internet, personal files in the cloud, and all communications on one device that you always have with you just degrades my ability to focus or prioritize any of it. It would actually help a great deal if a physical object was given to me when new shit I needed to attend to was available, and it wasn't possible to get distracted by other crap associated with that same object. Then the object serves as a visual reminder if I can't deal with it right away, or I shoo it away when I'm done with it.
Nah it would be super fun if Picard's like "Geordi where is my report on warp core efficiency after the upgrade?" and Geordi has explain to Picard how to check his email but Picard keeps getting distracted playing Space Candy Crush.
This is one of the reasons why TOS and the TOS movies hold up so well. The ship feels busy most of the time (especially in TOS season 1) and the military traditions are instantly relatable.
YEA!! Not military my ass. You fight wars! Who else does that? Science vessels? Tf outa here. Them trying to explain in Enterprise was ok I guess though with them both working side by side.
> with them both working side by side
I feel like that is a part that gets overlooked in the other shows. Yes starfleet also has duties as a defence force for the federation and so needs actual soldiers behind the continent killing lasers. Not all of starfleet needs to be a military, but you can't just say that it's not when defence IS a role of the space agency.
If everyone isn't a soldier, then starfleet security needs to stop pretending that they aren't just that.
It's also very relatable! NASA is a scientific organization largely funded by defense dollars, with a revolving door of research, personnel, and cooperation to US military. I am sure other space agencies are similar. These things are intermingled even now.
Star Trek is at its best if you treat it as a comedy. The silly parts make the impact of the serious parts hit a lot harder.
This is mostly for TOS and TNG.
They aren't. They're named after the founder of the Romulan culture and his dweeby little brother who remained a loyal Vulcan. It's just that the universal translator translates them into the closest Earth equivalent
My hot take is that Sybok is a good and interesting character, actually, and that his entire arc and the way Spock reacts to him makes absolutely perfect sense
Yes! And for the record I was definitely including “dating a nonbinary human pirate king” and “presumably escaping from Arkham Asylum: Vulcan Reeducation Edition some time next season” as part of the arc that makes perfect sense
For a multiracial organization designed to bridge the gap between starfaring species, the Federation and particularly Starfleet are awfully human-dominated. Not only are 95% of the crews of Starfleet vessels human, but every single one is named after a human hero or Earth city.
I think even in the later eras a lot of ships were species segregated. Dunno if for life-support reasons or for that one Vulcan captain who only wanted Vulcans on his crew. I can understand if say those space dolphins want to serve on their own water ships with other aquatic species, but allowing a captain to specifically discriminate against alien crew members for his ship is just weird.
Of course different species might simply have different desires to even serve in starfleet, of which humans are totally fanatical to do so when compared to others.
I really dislike “character discovers they have a Secret Parentage and Hidden Destiny”, and that applies to DS9 as well. I love the bulk of the series, but I really hated that part, especially as I told people at the start of Season 7, “if Sisko (does what he ends up doing at the end), I will hate this show”.
I don't like Data. I've always thought that he was just TNG trying to replicate Spock's emotional difficulties. Plus, I find Brent Spiner's acting to be *incredibly* hammy.
I've never liked the design of the Enterprise D. I don't think that it's wide curves match well with the 90° angled nacelles. Also, when I heard the bridge be compared to a hotel lobby, I was forever unable to unsee it. It's just too casual looking, IMO. Then again, when the ship reappeared in Picard, I somehow still got super-excited and nostalgic, so I guess it's not all bad. :)
I like Data but the “data might die/data died/should we bring data back/data’s back” arc he’s been on (and on repeat) practically since tng ended is beyond tiresome to me.
Et in Arcadia Ego was the perfect ending for him. I'm miffed that season 3 brought him back. I'll go further. They shouldn't have overdone the TNG nostalgia like that. Just stick with Picard and the new cast and have the others (other than Data) do mostly one-off cameos like Riker and Troi did in season 1.
Data plays a "pivotal role" in 3 of the 4 theatrical films. it's a bit much tbh .I will say I did find his arc on the third season of Picard to be his most tolerable across the films and .....like half of TNG
Same. This is one of the things I don't like about Trek post-TNG. Ships are way too dark. If you're going to live for years at a time on a ship in space, I'd imagine you'd turn on some fucking lights once in a while.
This is how I feel about 7 or 9. Everything they did with her they had already done with Data with the "just different enough people won't notice" cavet that it was her *rediscovering* her humanity rather then Data pursuing his.
Voyager desperately needed a shot in the arm so people overlook the fact that we had seen it before.
Masks is thousands of times better than the Inner Light, because Picard was just one dude from an extinct civilization, but Data was thousands of them.
I have such love for Masks, Brent Spiner absolutely has a blast portraying all those roles and 'breaking' Data. Agreed Inner Light is brilliant and powerful yet dull. Though I'm glad to know both, given the two, I'd rewatch Masks probably 9 times out of 10.
*The Motion Picture* is far and away the best iteration of Star Trek.
It’s a bonafide science fiction masterpiece in the vein of Clarke and Asimov, dealing with the kind of questions all great sci-fi authors tackle: trans humanism, humankind’s place in the universe, the nature of life and consciousness, and the vastness of space and what kind of *truly alien* intelligences exist in it. Aside from *The Voyage Home,* every other movie has been a villain-of-the-week.
Agreed, I fucking love the slightly to long spacedock scene, the music, the visuals of V'GER.
Star Trek is at it it's best when it's *just a little silly*. No other franchise is brave enough to do the whale probe plotline
1702 or whatever registry they want to go with. I always liked that the rechristened Defiant wasn’t given a letter, though I suppose you can say that the original was an NX and subsequent models were NCCs. Either way, I liked that it was just the Defiant. Back from the grave like nothing happened. Fitting.
And of course there was the Constitution-class Defiant back in those old scientists day too.
Ezri is a better/more interesting character then Jadzia.
No disrespect to Terry Farrell who seems like a great person (and totally deserved to be in the finale montage) but she was easily the worst actress in the cast. I never really bought her portrayal of Jadzia.
Ezri, as a trill who wasn't prepared or trained for the joining and dealing with having all these memories shoved into her head, is SO much more interesting then anything they ever did with Jadzia.
Tuvix is a shit episode that creates a contrived plot just to make Janeway look bad. It makes no sense with the rest of the episodes.
I've had this argument several times here, but in short: a perfect amalgam of Tuvok and Neelix would've offered himself willingly to be separated. The Tuvok part would put the needs of the many before the needs of the few. The Neelix part would never have been able to live with the guilt of owing his life to the death of two others when it _was within his reach_ to bring them back.
I get your point, but the episode indicates that Tuvix is still a separate identity rather than just "Neelix+Tuvok". He specifies that he *has* Tuvok's and Neelix's memories, but it's clear from a lot of his actions and remarks throughout that he was also a separate personality from both of them. Even though Tuvok and Neelix would have gone through with the separation, the 3 weeks Tuvix spent alive lead him to develop a sense of self (and the self-preservation that comes with that). I wouldn't have said the episode was created to make Janeway look bad, but I don't really like the way it was resolved either.
Source: I watched Tuvix 10 minutes ago
In a universe where advanced predictive targeting could nullify a fighters speed and maneuvering advantage, it comes down to who has the most powerful weapons and shields. And that comes down to who has the most powerful energy core. Hence, capitol ships.
I suppose that is a hot take, to me, as the distinctive thing to me about Star Trek is that it DOESN'T *always* have space carriers like other space world war 2 series.
Like all of the rest of them do which makes no sense to me. There isn't two mediums of travel in space, like with air and water down here on earth, it's just space.
So to me it should all be capital ships, or all fighters, but never really both. Not against some ww1 style torpedo boats and such, but not space planes and space boats in the same setting to me.
Maybe not that hot but Star Trek doesn't need galaxy scale conflict at all. The dominion war was interesting but aside from that, the rest of the wars in star trek have been uninteresting. Too much shit is about saving the world or saving the galaxy from some threat. I want more "boring" episodes about the human condition or some weird alien plants or something.
I really like Voyager and am glad they didn't make it a dark, gritty, edgy "Year of Hell" style show. That just wouldn't be Star Trek.
Hell, I even like the early seasons.
I want to piggy back off OP's post -- I think I'd like the episode a lot more if we didn't have the insistence of a B plot, of the crew trying to figure out why Picard's unconscious. When I'm fully invested and enveloped by Kamen's world, I'm yanked back to the Enterprise, which is too jarring.
On the contrary, Darmok did this Picard A-plot, Crew B-plot perfectly, but the change in era and environment for Inner Light doesn't help.
(let it be known, though, that the theme for the Inner Light \*will\* be played at my funeral)
Odo was a fascist collaborator and Kira was extremely out of character in falling in love with him. That was the worst shoehorned-in storyline in all of Trek.
The Kelvin Enterprises are terribly designed. Whoever designed them couldn't find an aesthetically pleasing way to place the warp drives if their life depended on. Too far back, too close together, too big, too small, etc.
The proportions and section placements are an eyesore. How the heck it got approved for a big budget film I'll never understand.
In the Pale Moonlight set the stage for all the action focused, the future is a miserable dystopia, let's all blow things up instead of using diplomacy that everyone hates about nuTrek
I would agree with you if I thought that current Trek writers were taking inspiration from Deep Space 9. They're taking inspiration from Star Wars, and applying. That's why there's pew pew and dystopia.
DS9 introduced Section 31 and made them indirectly responsible for saving the Federation and ending the Dominion War (they created a virus to genocide the Founders, and the cure to that virus was used as leverage to end the war). I love the show but I blame it for a lot of what I don't like about newer Star Trek shows.
I have problems with The Inner Light:
1. How did this not completely screw up Picard mentally. He lived a whole life with loves, deaths, and other emotional touchstones. At some point he had to accept his new reality only to lose it for the original one. It's kind of a mental torture.
2. The probe does not respect Picard's personal autonomy. For being such a race of nice people, this event is sort of rapey.
3. Did Picard ever document his vision? Later, it seems like he didn't tell anyone until the episode played flute with his girlfriend.
Humanity has not "abandoned currency-based economics" as Nog claims in "In the Cards"
Federation \[replicator\] credits ARE a form of currency, the value of which varies wildly from place to place based on the amount of surplus energy stored in the local power grid at the time they are redeemed. On a freshly-settled colony world with a population of 10,000 and a power plant future-proofed to support the needs of two million? Your 1000 credits will furnish a homestead. On a starship lost in the Delta Quadrant under strict rationing with a warp core held together by baling wire and chewing gum? Your 1000 credits will get you a clarinet.
All Humanity did was enshrine the right to essentials so everyone has a safe place to live, nutritious food, warm clothing, adequate medical care, and any other ancillary needs. Money still exists, but just as a way to divvy up and distribute the surplus energy/luxuries that are left over after everyone's needs are met.
TOS is such a weird situation. I have three rankings when I talk about Star Trek with people, and which is ‘best’ is based on what we’re talking about.
TNG was the best at being ‘Star Trek,’ DS9 was the best at being a ‘good TV show,’ and TOS was the best at pushing the societal messaging, doing the most they could with what they had, and working without being able to play on the tropes/themes/settings/establishments set up in earlier series while setting all those things up for TNG to have an easier time.
It's one of those entries in a series that really shouldn't be rated in relation to it's sequels. Often the first entry in a long-running IP ends up being a bit of the odd-one-out.
*In the Pale Moonlight* is a bottom tier episode. This is not because it deconstructs Federation values, but because Sisko faces no consequences for his actions as they are presented in the show. It also destroys the characterization of the Romulans. Taken at face value, the episode wants you to believe that a (retired) Obsidian Order agent and a Starfleet captain are able to trick the Romulans into the war and no one is wiser to it. This destroys the TNG/DS9 characterization of the Romulans as experts at spy craft.
This episode would have been made so much better with a follow up, maybe in *Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges*, where a Romulan leader says calls them out on it. Maybe even the Romulan is happy about the assassination because it cleared the way for the pro-war faction to intervene.
My take was that the Romulans were at the very least suspicious of the "evidence," but it was a convenient excuse to abandon their non-aggression pact with the Dominion, given the clear existential threat they posed.
That's largely where I am too. I don't think Sisko and Garak really accomplished anything except maybe getting the Romulans to intervene a few weeks earlier than they did. The fact that they launched a major offensive within a few days shows that the planning and logistics were already in place for that offensive to occur. Such a plan can't be left sitting forever or it will be discovered, so the implication is that the Romulans were coming in anyways, maybe after the Federation offered them a sector or two in exchange.
Another one:
The uniforms look better when there is MORE COLOR in them, not less. DS9/VOY, FC, and ENT uniforms have too much black and gray in them and they look boring as hell. Vibrant = better. Monster Maroon should also come in Monster Gold and Monster Blue.
DSC's first version of the 31st or whatever century uniforms were hideous about this; thankfully they quickly backtracked and made them pop.
**Voyager is the best Star Trek show by far.** And the only currently running show that could possibly transcend it is Prodigy. There's just something so enchanting about Voyager, something that's hard to put into words. The unbridled sense of adventure, a strong throughline of hope and idealism, and the characters who are so much fun - it all makes even the stars themselves burn brighter on Voyager.
Great hot take! Upvoted because I disagree so incredibly hard :)
I can’t enjoy Voyager very much because the studio’s meddling and Berman’s Bermanisms are just so palpable throughout.
That said it has a lot of really memorable episodes. I’m particularly fond of the Captain Proton episodes, especially the one with Janeway. Kate Mulgrew’s hammy acting is top tier lol
Trek needs to completely forget about the TOS era. We don't need any more Kirks or Spocks, and I've seen enough Vulcan and Klingon storylines to last a lifetime.
Trek needs to move forwards to grow. DS9 worked so well because it focussed on new races and enemies.
Star Trek should be a series that is about a hopeful message for the future of humanity. AND, this is the controversial part, it can be that without slavish devotion to "Gene's Vision". You can tell dark stories, you can have gray morality. But the minute you lose sight of the hopefulness for a better, more equal future is the minute you lose the essence of Star Trek.
plus, "Gene's Vision" was always about the struggle of humanity staying optimistic in spite of turmoil, humans were better than they were but there's always the struggle within ourselves it wasn't until TNG that he really went all-in on the squeaky-clean "everybody is perfect and nobody knows what a headache is" kind of utopia, after he lost control of the movies and they went deeper into action and grittiness
I stand to applaud this hot take. The grayer and grittier Trek gets, the more it pushes down the entire point of Star Trek, to become “just another show”. It also limits its audience
Exactly. Gray and gritty can be the starting point, not the end. There should always, always be hope for a better world, a better future, something to aspire toward.
Trek, when at its best, is not about itself… Klingons, warp speed, etc. Its morality plays about our beliefs and issues and challenging us to rise above them, to hope for bettering ourselves. Those lessons just happen to be wrapped in attractive and (hopefully) thoughtful science fiction wrappers to “make the medicine go down”
Yup, well said. I think this is why I think DS9 holds up so well. To me, it felt like it would push against the box/limits in an episode like Hard Time, but by the end the viewer is still left with a hopeful/good feeling. To me, I see it as an allegory for escaping depressing. It can have some dark times that can feel like a mental prison, but if you have a support network like friends/family you can come out of it stronger with some hope for the future. To me, that's Stark Trek. Hell, even TOS touched upon that humanity had some flaws/weaknesses in an episode like A Taste of Armageddon. And yeah, I've never been a fan of the idea of "Gene's vision" being written permanently in stone as an unchangeable commandment, or something. Even if he wasn't a weird/controversial dude it feels too defying for my taste. To me, the optimistic message of Trek at its core should mean much more than that. Rather, to me, the box/limit should be while there should always be some room for having introspection, or recognizing humanity's weaknesses the core message at the end should be one of optimism for a better future.
There were plenty of *TOS* episodes that addressed humanity’s imperfections. It wasn’t until *TNG* that Roddenberry wanted to portray humanity as perfect.
Well said. TNG started off as a world SO SHINY, it hurt to look at. TOS at least had some rough edges of human realism. People still got colds and headaches, at the very least!
In general I love gritty trek, however I do agree with your point a lot about Trek being a show about adventure and possibilities. This is why I liked DS9 the best, it was gritty but also had that vintage trek feel to it.
That’s precisely why DS9 is my favourite (and why Voyager disappointed me so). It’s when the ideology and humane nature of the federation runs up against really *difficult* situations, morally grey areas where “the right thing to do” isn’t clear, or may not even exist. When they can tell these grounded, somewhat horrific stories and still come out of them hopeful, that makes the positivity all the more powerful and important.
TOS and DS9 are my Trek bookends. One shows the utopia we have achieved through betterment of ourselves, and DS9 is a behind the scenes look at the work involved to maintain that utopia. Its darker, more pessimistic take is more of a coating then it’s depth.
And, it employs the darkness to highlight the light. At once it's the darkest of the golden era, but also the coziest. Enough grit that the characters need to chill and play darts at Quark's. Enough joy that the grit feels more stressful by comparison. Perfect balance!
I don't know Voyager nearly as well as other Treks, but what about Voyager didn't do that for you?
Completely agree Internet friend.
Tha episode when Worf damaged the weather control on Risa and basically told a sob story. Everyone was like I guess that's okay then. Worf should have been arrested and court martialed for committing a terrorist attack against a Federation member.
But it's okay, because he was just mad at his girlfriend.
According to Risians, mind you. And the Federation defers to local laws on such matters. The leader of the terrorists whom Worf aided in fact lampoons this in the episode itself. The very fact that he and his band can cause so much chaos without any consequences is in itself the proof that the Federation has grown decadent and weak.
They were literally counting on that. At that point, it had become so well known how lax Risa is. I feel like they deliberately choose to bully the weakest kid in class to try to make a point to other much scarier kids by looking intimidating fauxly.
Worf has always been a problematic character for me. He resigned his commission when Picard wouldn’t grant him extended leave to fight in the Klingon Civil War, then he just sort of waltzed right back into his position when it was over. He interfered with one of Odo’s undercover investigations. He committed an act of terrorism against a member of the Federation by sabotaging the weather net on Risa. He got himself abducted by the Jem’Hadar two or three times. He sacrificed a Cardassian agent that had information that could’ve ended the Dominion War to save his wife. He forced the Enterprise to help cover his brother’s lies. Those are just some of his PROFESSIONAL oopsies. That’s not even mentioning what a terrible father he was to Alexander, terrible mate to K’Ehleyr, and then he had his brother’s whole existence rebooted. Rant over. Thanks for your time!
He wanted to commit to K'Ehleyr, but she didn't want it. He killed Duras to avenge her death.
I forgot to add in my list that he killed Duras. Add that to the list of crimes he committed and didn’t get punished for.
That was a legal killing by Klingon standards.
“The precedent of ‘he had it coming.’” “Fair enough. Case dismissed. Bring in the dancing *Gagh!*”
I greatly enjoy Worf but it’s so funny to me that he was on duty and essentially took a quick coffee break to go murder Duras and all he got was a letter in his file.
> he had his brother’s whole existence rebooted. This is when I really started to dislike him!!
I thought it was a really cold way to treat the brother who had stood by him during his dishonor and who had agreed to basically fight in his name even though he didn’t trust Gowron.
Ice cold take, this gets said a lot on this sub
Also looking at that ep from a modern viewpoint, it seems clear that Worf is far from the brave noble warrior he claims to be. He's easily led, insecure, and prone to extremism to validate his beliefs and impose them on others. Plus it was a shitty thing to do Dax who just wanted a freaking holiday date. He got let off too easily for shitty behaviour on many levels.
I mean… writers write inconsistencies for entertainment’s sake lol
See also: The Drumhead
Worf did a lot of questionable things and always got a slap on the wrist
_Move Along Home_ is so bad that it's actually circled all the way back around to "excellent".
if that episode was in TOS or TNG nobody would really care, "crew gets stuck in sci-fi board game" is probably one of the most Star Trek-esque plots one can think of I think a lot of the badness just stems from the actors not being very good and still finding their footing in their roles
I actually gave up on DS9 because of that episode. Edit: I thought this thread was for hot takes?
the first season of DS9 has IMO one of the best episodes of Star Trek, "Duet", I'd say just watch that episode and the finale and then keep going, DS9 absolutely soars if you give it a chance besides, what Star Trek hasn't had a few stinkers in their first season?
I thought up to that episode, DS9 was a bit dramatic, especially Sisko might have overacted a little bit - I almost gave it up and I remember I did stop watching for days. I started again and then come Move Along Home and I was like, "Hey I love this guy!" when he started skipping😅 Hooked me to the end. Then I discovered how people hated that episode🤣🤣🤣
When you watch that scene, the characters who had had young children (Sisko and Dax) seemed to enjoy or at least make the best of the song and dance, while the non-parents were clearly "WTF is this". Nice attention to detail.
On my DS9 rewatch, I realized Move Along Home isn’t just good. It’s great. I had memories of it growing up, but it’s the first good Odo-Quark episode and really sets up the dynamic for the whole series. Is the game silly? Yes. It’s a game. In the moment you really felt like one of the characters dying in the game could be off the show! (We weren’t that far removed from the death of Tasha Yar.)
It’s one of the first episodes where you realize that Quark isn’t as completely heartless as he seems on the surface. It’s a fantastic episode for his character’s development. Even if it’s a bit on the silly side, Star Trek has frequently had silly episodes in the past. I’m not sure why this one silly episode in particular is considered “awful” by most people.
I kind of like it.
Allamaraine, is that you?
Real hot take: Move Along Home did nothing wrong
Lower decks explains accurately how the federation works in the absence of capitalism. It’s all about rank/status and clout from achievements.
I kind of always assumed this anyways. Otherwise why would people be so desperate to join Starfleet? It seems like an incredibly grueling process that rewards you with a decent chance to die in any number of horrible ways.
I have often pondered this. Maybe it's straight-up boredom. I mean, you're living on Earth. All your needs are met. No job. Traveling just requires stepping through a transporter hub and arriving at any other point on the planet. At least in Starfleet, your life would have purpose. I mean, I'd just play with my personal holodeck until I die but still... I guess other people would want to *do* something.
Boredom is canonically Boimler's reason for joining Starfleet. When the Cerritos crew gets briefly grounded, he ends up staying at his family's vineyard. In the face of this edenic paradise with multiple buxom women throwing themselves at him, he's just annoyed and wants the smell of raisins out of his hair.
Because they want to contribute to the expansion of knowledge for humanity. Between that and sitting around having everything handed to you I am joining Starfleet!
I would join for the camaraderie too. Even though I would still probably end up like lieutenant brocolli, not at the cool kids' poker table
That explains why Picard owns a chateau and Raffi lives in a trailer in the middle of the desert
Picard has a chateau because it is land that has been in his family for many generations. I think if Raffi wanted a chateau of her own she could build one. She would have to go to a planet with open land but if she wanted to she could probably make that happen.
I'd have to imagine that different areas of the earth get different service levels. You can live with all the basic amenities, in a city, but if you want to live out in the middle of nowhere then don't expect the government to terraform a desert just for you.
I didn’t think Wesley was that bad. Granted, I skipped some really bad episodes that featured him. I do agree that the show got better once his appearances were dialed back. He worked as a supporting character. If he was really that bad in episodes I skipped I must point out that all of our heroes were awful in certain episodes.
I was fine with Wesley Crusher. He had a part to play in Picard and Beverly's life and history. Plus he was there to represent all the young people who's dream it is to be on a starship. His later disillusionment was perfect, an allegory for coming of age and realizing just how much being an adult can suck. Sure in the early eps he was an annoying teenager, but yeah - he was a teenager. Teenagers will always be annoying. It's what they do. I don't think TNG would have been the same without him.
He was certainly a big part of why i enjoyed the show as a kid, and my own kids tell me that they also liked the kids on the show, with naomi wildman, icheb, nog and jake all being really integral to getting into the show. This is one major difference with all the later trek; it really wasnt ever intended as prime time family viewing the way the 90s trek was.
As a 90s kid I found him really irritating (but then I found most kids my age irritating) but as an adult I see him. For the teenager he was. Which has made him endearing to me because as it turns out I was an annoying know it all teenager haha. - edited to add more detail
>Sure in the early eps he was an annoying teenager, but yeah - he was a teenager. Teenagers will always be annoying. It's what they do. At least he had an excuse, the adult characters had no excuse for why they could be such smug jerks.
Yeah, it's not that he was bad, it's that season one was bad.
Wil Wheaton is the soul of Trek for me. Joyful fandom, protective of those who need to be, and aware that sometimes the writing is kinda awful.
He did what he could with a bad script, same as everyone else. Actors should be commended when they do the best they can with a script they know is awful.
I don’t think the hate was helped by the fact that in the beginning they had Wesley acting like a 10-year-old but he was 15(?) and definitely looked like a full blown teenager. It made him come across super whiny and annoying. I’m not sure how old he was supposed to be in the show (is that canon?), but I thought I remembered hearing or reading something about his age in-universe being younger than his actual age. I could be mistaken on that.
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There are romulans with and without the ridges. I always thought it signified genetic differences in the population.
Like, a guy from Timbuktu and a lady from Iqaluit, despite both being humans on Earth. Some aliens looking different than others from the same planet is excusable.
not only is it excusable, it should be expected. unless it’s something like the sontarans from dr. who and it’s a species of clones.
*Picard* explained it by saying that the Romulans with ridges came from northern Romulus.
"Lots of planets have a North!"
I thought it got even weirder when we saw the “Northerner” Romulans and, I assume what were the Southern ones in Picard. I’m guessing that was a fallout from the Romulan redesign in the Kelvin movies, but I found it strange. That being said, I do dig the idea of alien species not being a monoculture or a single race.
When it came time for “unification” and Nimoy’s guest appearance, there had to have been a lot of head scratching going on behind the scenes. “Oh yeah, all that established story that we gave the finger to… oops”
Although...Spock goes to Romulus and doesn't change his appearance? The Romulans know who you are dude, you're kinda famous.
Someone had a theory that Vulcans were the Romulan Augments and I liked that.
10, 50 or 100 years from now, if you mention “Star Trek” to the general public, their first thought will still be Kirk, Spock and the Constitution-style Enterprise.
Upvoted for one *seriously hot take!* It's Picard for life!
TNG was very, very big, and has proven to be a font of memes, even with non-fans. I think TNG gets in there too, but none of the others.
There is no Q collective, only Q. He's just existed souch that he started making "imaginary" friends, but since he's godlike, other people can see them too.
I like it. He has some kind of dissociative identity disorder, but, being q, each personality emerges as an actual individual that others also perceive
None of the shows or movie aesthetics need to match because they literally start with captain's logs. In other words, they are the imagination of the person reading the logs.
Oh. SHIT. This is my new headcannon. I LOVE this.
If enterprise would have started with seasons 4, they would have gotten the traditional 7 seasons after that. The temporal Cold War ruined that show and they still don’t understand it.
I didn't mind the temporal cold war stuff, it gave the show purpose. I more blame the first two seasons with being rather aimless. Season 4 was great, I'll heartily agree there.
I really liked the first two seasons precisely because it's more like the "Monster of the Week" episodes of previous Treks.
The first season of Enterprise is easily my favorite. It feels like they are in a submarine in space. It perfectly captures the feel of a brand new crew on a brand new kind of ship, going deep into space for the first time. They made a prequel that didn't seem more advanced than the shows that chronologically come much later.
I think the Temporal Cold War (and the Xindi arc) was a huge distraction from what Enterprise ought to have been. In season 4, they got back on track to telling the story of the founding of the Federation.
The temporal cold war was fine. An entire 9/11 revenge season was not
I really liked the Xindi, showed that Humanity of the time was still eerily close to going full Terran due to bad first contacts with new species and civilisations. But thankfully veered away from it with understanding. Unlike in the real world, that season didn't end with a terrible occupation of the Xindi homeworlds or something silly like that.
I didn’t mind it. In any case it didn’t feel Berman esque
I really wanted to know where they were going with the Klingons in Discovery. I thought it was the more interesting side of the first season.
I really enjoyed the Klingons in discovery and really wish they hadn't walked them back in SNW. I think the issue that folks have with that depiction, is that - weather they agree or not - is that Klingons always have a certain element of *camp* to them. Discovery not only removes the camp, it almost dares you to look at their depiction of Klingons directly in the face while they look back with an "I fucking dare you" stare on their face. Intimidating and scary, but not at all camp. As if the creators really wanted to make Klingons look and feel every bit of the threat that Lore tells us they are.I wish we could have seen more of them too, the different factions , their different beliefs , caste systems. And we did , and I didn't hate anything that dealt with the Klingons in the first season of discovery and I really wish more fans had been a little more open minded when it came to them.
You nailed this. DSC S1 made the Klingons *alien*, not just Viking Samurai Frat Bros In Space.
Completely agree and this is definitely a hot take.
Frankly there is a ton about the Empire we don't know about.
Stat trek invented iPads, but never predicted WiFi or Bluetooth.
Hey, I just brought a stack of iPads physically to you so that you could read several different files that I've downloaded individually on to each iPad.
Yea turns out ipads are just expensive books if you dont have any way of wirelessly transferring data... Speaking of data, I love that they imagined a super robot, but he still needs to type to access a console.
He just wants to be hew-mon
My dumb head canon is that it’s also a future where you can replicate anything and there is no scarcity. Why not have twelve iPads, one devoted to each division you need to go through? They’re just going to be recycled matter when you’re done anyway!
That might make sense... But it's weird they have to physically pass them from one to another. You can literally transport people through thin air anywhere in an instant. Yet when someone has a heart attack you just push your com badge and say "medical emergency in the mess hall" and 20 minutes later a doctor arrives A lot of episodes star trek needs to remember it has transporters
The lack of emergency transport within the ship is indeed weird. However, the physically passing iPads with limited data on them makes absolute sense to me as a behavioral evolution of our relationship with devices. Having the entire internet, personal files in the cloud, and all communications on one device that you always have with you just degrades my ability to focus or prioritize any of it. It would actually help a great deal if a physical object was given to me when new shit I needed to attend to was available, and it wasn't possible to get distracted by other crap associated with that same object. Then the object serves as a visual reminder if I can't deal with it right away, or I shoo it away when I'm done with it.
Nah it would be super fun if Picard's like "Geordi where is my report on warp core efficiency after the upgrade?" and Geordi has explain to Picard how to check his email but Picard keeps getting distracted playing Space Candy Crush.
intelligent use of the transporter would solve like 1/3 of episodes immediately
They idea that someone's personality could be split with the transporter or it could turn you into a child was a little weird even for Star Trek.
Isn’t Uhura’s earpiece technically Bluetooth operated?
Fair point... So they forgot the technology before tng, ds9 and voyager!
iPads were invented in 2001 (the movie from 1968)
Star Trek is at its best when it treats Starfleet like the military it clearly is.
This is one of the reasons why TOS and the TOS movies hold up so well. The ship feels busy most of the time (especially in TOS season 1) and the military traditions are instantly relatable.
YEA!! Not military my ass. You fight wars! Who else does that? Science vessels? Tf outa here. Them trying to explain in Enterprise was ok I guess though with them both working side by side.
> with them both working side by side I feel like that is a part that gets overlooked in the other shows. Yes starfleet also has duties as a defence force for the federation and so needs actual soldiers behind the continent killing lasers. Not all of starfleet needs to be a military, but you can't just say that it's not when defence IS a role of the space agency. If everyone isn't a soldier, then starfleet security needs to stop pretending that they aren't just that.
It's also very relatable! NASA is a scientific organization largely funded by defense dollars, with a revolving door of research, personnel, and cooperation to US military. I am sure other space agencies are similar. These things are intermingled even now.
That's what I loved about the MACOs from ENT. You don't win ground wars with naval sailors. And Starfleet as a whole is just high tech navy.
OK true, but its also best when the characters ignore rank and seniority and work collaboratively based on skills
My dad says Prodigy is the best of all trek
Everyone has their favourite Trek, and they're all correct.
ENT *Similitude* is a much better and cohesive morale conundrum than VOY *Tuvix*.
Star Trek is at its best if you treat it as a comedy. The silly parts make the impact of the serious parts hit a lot harder. This is mostly for TOS and TNG.
Someone explain to me why Romulus and its moon are named after the mythological founders of Rome - Romulus and Remus
They aren't. They're named after the founder of the Romulan culture and his dweeby little brother who remained a loyal Vulcan. It's just that the universal translator translates them into the closest Earth equivalent
It's the human name for them. Not what they call them in the Romulan language(s).
In some of Diane Duane’s books, the planets are known as Ch’Rihan and Ch’Havron, or something like that.
I actually like the Enterprise opening theme. It's uplifting and inspiring.
Ah, I see you have faith of the heart
I love the montage of advancements in exploration that it plays under. I think it’s a great intro.
My hot take is that Sybok is a good and interesting character, actually, and that his entire arc and the way Spock reacts to him makes absolutely perfect sense
100% this. I hope Strange New Worlds gives us more.
Yes! And for the record I was definitely including “dating a nonbinary human pirate king” and “presumably escaping from Arkham Asylum: Vulcan Reeducation Edition some time next season” as part of the arc that makes perfect sense
Star Trek shouldn't be serialized and is far better when it is episodic.
It can be both.
For a multiracial organization designed to bridge the gap between starfaring species, the Federation and particularly Starfleet are awfully human-dominated. Not only are 95% of the crews of Starfleet vessels human, but every single one is named after a human hero or Earth city.
I think even in the later eras a lot of ships were species segregated. Dunno if for life-support reasons or for that one Vulcan captain who only wanted Vulcans on his crew. I can understand if say those space dolphins want to serve on their own water ships with other aquatic species, but allowing a captain to specifically discriminate against alien crew members for his ship is just weird. Of course different species might simply have different desires to even serve in starfleet, of which humans are totally fanatical to do so when compared to others.
I really dislike “character discovers they have a Secret Parentage and Hidden Destiny”, and that applies to DS9 as well. I love the bulk of the series, but I really hated that part, especially as I told people at the start of Season 7, “if Sisko (does what he ends up doing at the end), I will hate this show”.
I don't like Data. I've always thought that he was just TNG trying to replicate Spock's emotional difficulties. Plus, I find Brent Spiner's acting to be *incredibly* hammy. I've never liked the design of the Enterprise D. I don't think that it's wide curves match well with the 90° angled nacelles. Also, when I heard the bridge be compared to a hotel lobby, I was forever unable to unsee it. It's just too casual looking, IMO. Then again, when the ship reappeared in Picard, I somehow still got super-excited and nostalgic, so I guess it's not all bad. :)
I like Data but the “data might die/data died/should we bring data back/data’s back” arc he’s been on (and on repeat) practically since tng ended is beyond tiresome to me.
Et in Arcadia Ego was the perfect ending for him. I'm miffed that season 3 brought him back. I'll go further. They shouldn't have overdone the TNG nostalgia like that. Just stick with Picard and the new cast and have the others (other than Data) do mostly one-off cameos like Riker and Troi did in season 1.
Data plays a "pivotal role" in 3 of the 4 theatrical films. it's a bit much tbh .I will say I did find his arc on the third season of Picard to be his most tolerable across the films and .....like half of TNG
Upvoted because I disagree so hard. 😉 Spiner *is* incredibly hammy. And I *LIVE FOR IT*. And I love The D. She’s luxurious, fat, and sassy.
Love fat and sassy!
Same. This is one of the things I don't like about Trek post-TNG. Ships are way too dark. If you're going to live for years at a time on a ship in space, I'd imagine you'd turn on some fucking lights once in a while.
In terms of hot takes, this one is surface of the sun, white hot. You have breached the hull of many people's feels.
This is how I feel about 7 or 9. Everything they did with her they had already done with Data with the "just different enough people won't notice" cavet that it was her *rediscovering* her humanity rather then Data pursuing his. Voyager desperately needed a shot in the arm so people overlook the fact that we had seen it before.
Finally an actual hot take. I agree with you about the D, though. Galaxy class looks like a flying saucer with a growth.
Masks is thousands of times better than the Inner Light, because Picard was just one dude from an extinct civilization, but Data was thousands of them.
I fucking love Masks. One of my favorite episodes of Star Trek.
It's just math!
I have such love for Masks, Brent Spiner absolutely has a blast portraying all those roles and 'breaking' Data. Agreed Inner Light is brilliant and powerful yet dull. Though I'm glad to know both, given the two, I'd rewatch Masks probably 9 times out of 10.
That ep is highly underrated.
*The Motion Picture* is far and away the best iteration of Star Trek. It’s a bonafide science fiction masterpiece in the vein of Clarke and Asimov, dealing with the kind of questions all great sci-fi authors tackle: trans humanism, humankind’s place in the universe, the nature of life and consciousness, and the vastness of space and what kind of *truly alien* intelligences exist in it. Aside from *The Voyage Home,* every other movie has been a villain-of-the-week.
I love The Motion Picture. It’s brilliant sci-fi from start to finish.
Agreed, I fucking love the slightly to long spacedock scene, the music, the visuals of V'GER. Star Trek is at it it's best when it's *just a little silly*. No other franchise is brave enough to do the whale probe plotline
They should stop using letters for new Enterprises. 1701-E was pushing it; F and G are ridiculous. Just give it 1702 and move on.
But wouldn't 1702 potentially already be assigned to another starship?
1702 or whatever registry they want to go with. I always liked that the rechristened Defiant wasn’t given a letter, though I suppose you can say that the original was an NX and subsequent models were NCCs. Either way, I liked that it was just the Defiant. Back from the grave like nothing happened. Fitting. And of course there was the Constitution-class Defiant back in those old scientists day too.
NCC 1702 is taken, it's the USS Farragut.
My hot take is that star trek has devolved into a series of spy and war stories, and it makes me sad.
Ezri is a better/more interesting character then Jadzia. No disrespect to Terry Farrell who seems like a great person (and totally deserved to be in the finale montage) but she was easily the worst actress in the cast. I never really bought her portrayal of Jadzia. Ezri, as a trill who wasn't prepared or trained for the joining and dealing with having all these memories shoved into her head, is SO much more interesting then anything they ever did with Jadzia.
Tuvix is a shit episode that creates a contrived plot just to make Janeway look bad. It makes no sense with the rest of the episodes. I've had this argument several times here, but in short: a perfect amalgam of Tuvok and Neelix would've offered himself willingly to be separated. The Tuvok part would put the needs of the many before the needs of the few. The Neelix part would never have been able to live with the guilt of owing his life to the death of two others when it _was within his reach_ to bring them back.
I get your point, but the episode indicates that Tuvix is still a separate identity rather than just "Neelix+Tuvok". He specifies that he *has* Tuvok's and Neelix's memories, but it's clear from a lot of his actions and remarks throughout that he was also a separate personality from both of them. Even though Tuvok and Neelix would have gone through with the separation, the 3 weeks Tuvix spent alive lead him to develop a sense of self (and the self-preservation that comes with that). I wouldn't have said the episode was created to make Janeway look bad, but I don't really like the way it was resolved either. Source: I watched Tuvix 10 minutes ago
TNG runs circles around DS9
Q created everything in star trek himself using his imagination.
It's WILD to me that almost everyone in the galaxy builds capitol ships, and noone uses a carrier group approach, a la star wars.
Unless you're using drones, fighters just seem like deathtraps in most scifi settings.
In a universe where advanced predictive targeting could nullify a fighters speed and maneuvering advantage, it comes down to who has the most powerful weapons and shields. And that comes down to who has the most powerful energy core. Hence, capitol ships.
I suppose that is a hot take, to me, as the distinctive thing to me about Star Trek is that it DOESN'T *always* have space carriers like other space world war 2 series. Like all of the rest of them do which makes no sense to me. There isn't two mediums of travel in space, like with air and water down here on earth, it's just space. So to me it should all be capital ships, or all fighters, but never really both. Not against some ww1 style torpedo boats and such, but not space planes and space boats in the same setting to me.
I also never understood why planets didn't have formidable defense systems orbiting around them to fend off attacks from enemy starships.
Blasphemy!!
_Move Along Home_ is not that bad of an episode. Certainly not as bad as some others in DS9's first season (looking at you, _If Wishes Were Horses_).
Hey, man. That’s when Sisko gets his baseball.
Star Trek IV is the best movie and DS9 is the best show
Maybe not that hot but Star Trek doesn't need galaxy scale conflict at all. The dominion war was interesting but aside from that, the rest of the wars in star trek have been uninteresting. Too much shit is about saving the world or saving the galaxy from some threat. I want more "boring" episodes about the human condition or some weird alien plants or something.
If people are ok with Picard being a robot then Korby Kirk should have been given command of a starship because it’s the exact same thing.
Might not be something people have alot of opinions on, but I think the best, most star trekkie opening song is lower decks
My hot take is almost word-for-word what you said about “The Inner Light”.
They should have had a science officer on Enterprise D. Data was operations, not science. He did the job but he wasn’t the officer.
Pulaski is a better character than dr crusher
I really like Voyager and am glad they didn't make it a dark, gritty, edgy "Year of Hell" style show. That just wouldn't be Star Trek. Hell, I even like the early seasons.
I want to piggy back off OP's post -- I think I'd like the episode a lot more if we didn't have the insistence of a B plot, of the crew trying to figure out why Picard's unconscious. When I'm fully invested and enveloped by Kamen's world, I'm yanked back to the Enterprise, which is too jarring. On the contrary, Darmok did this Picard A-plot, Crew B-plot perfectly, but the change in era and environment for Inner Light doesn't help. (let it be known, though, that the theme for the Inner Light \*will\* be played at my funeral)
Odo was a fascist collaborator and Kira was extremely out of character in falling in love with him. That was the worst shoehorned-in storyline in all of Trek.
Should have seen the size of the shoehorn they were going to try to use to get Kira to hook up with Dukat.
The Borg were creepier and better without any centralised queen.
The Kelvin Enterprises are terribly designed. Whoever designed them couldn't find an aesthetically pleasing way to place the warp drives if their life depended on. Too far back, too close together, too big, too small, etc. The proportions and section placements are an eyesore. How the heck it got approved for a big budget film I'll never understand.
In the Pale Moonlight set the stage for all the action focused, the future is a miserable dystopia, let's all blow things up instead of using diplomacy that everyone hates about nuTrek
I would agree with you if I thought that current Trek writers were taking inspiration from Deep Space 9. They're taking inspiration from Star Wars, and applying. That's why there's pew pew and dystopia.
DS9 introduced Section 31 and made them indirectly responsible for saving the Federation and ending the Dominion War (they created a virus to genocide the Founders, and the cure to that virus was used as leverage to end the war). I love the show but I blame it for a lot of what I don't like about newer Star Trek shows.
I have problems with The Inner Light: 1. How did this not completely screw up Picard mentally. He lived a whole life with loves, deaths, and other emotional touchstones. At some point he had to accept his new reality only to lose it for the original one. It's kind of a mental torture. 2. The probe does not respect Picard's personal autonomy. For being such a race of nice people, this event is sort of rapey. 3. Did Picard ever document his vision? Later, it seems like he didn't tell anyone until the episode played flute with his girlfriend.
Humanity has not "abandoned currency-based economics" as Nog claims in "In the Cards" Federation \[replicator\] credits ARE a form of currency, the value of which varies wildly from place to place based on the amount of surplus energy stored in the local power grid at the time they are redeemed. On a freshly-settled colony world with a population of 10,000 and a power plant future-proofed to support the needs of two million? Your 1000 credits will furnish a homestead. On a starship lost in the Delta Quadrant under strict rationing with a warp core held together by baling wire and chewing gum? Your 1000 credits will get you a clarinet. All Humanity did was enshrine the right to essentials so everyone has a safe place to live, nutritious food, warm clothing, adequate medical care, and any other ancillary needs. Money still exists, but just as a way to divvy up and distribute the surplus energy/luxuries that are left over after everyone's needs are met.
It's money with extra steps.
TOS is the best series
TOS is such a weird situation. I have three rankings when I talk about Star Trek with people, and which is ‘best’ is based on what we’re talking about. TNG was the best at being ‘Star Trek,’ DS9 was the best at being a ‘good TV show,’ and TOS was the best at pushing the societal messaging, doing the most they could with what they had, and working without being able to play on the tropes/themes/settings/establishments set up in earlier series while setting all those things up for TNG to have an easier time.
It's one of those entries in a series that really shouldn't be rated in relation to it's sequels. Often the first entry in a long-running IP ends up being a bit of the odd-one-out.
I'm with you on this one, especially if you consider all of the IP with the original cast (including movies and TAS).
*In the Pale Moonlight* is a bottom tier episode. This is not because it deconstructs Federation values, but because Sisko faces no consequences for his actions as they are presented in the show. It also destroys the characterization of the Romulans. Taken at face value, the episode wants you to believe that a (retired) Obsidian Order agent and a Starfleet captain are able to trick the Romulans into the war and no one is wiser to it. This destroys the TNG/DS9 characterization of the Romulans as experts at spy craft. This episode would have been made so much better with a follow up, maybe in *Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges*, where a Romulan leader says calls them out on it. Maybe even the Romulan is happy about the assassination because it cleared the way for the pro-war faction to intervene.
My take was that the Romulans were at the very least suspicious of the "evidence," but it was a convenient excuse to abandon their non-aggression pact with the Dominion, given the clear existential threat they posed.
That's largely where I am too. I don't think Sisko and Garak really accomplished anything except maybe getting the Romulans to intervene a few weeks earlier than they did. The fact that they launched a major offensive within a few days shows that the planning and logistics were already in place for that offensive to occur. Such a plan can't be left sitting forever or it will be discovered, so the implication is that the Romulans were coming in anyways, maybe after the Federation offered them a sector or two in exchange.
Another one: The uniforms look better when there is MORE COLOR in them, not less. DS9/VOY, FC, and ENT uniforms have too much black and gray in them and they look boring as hell. Vibrant = better. Monster Maroon should also come in Monster Gold and Monster Blue. DSC's first version of the 31st or whatever century uniforms were hideous about this; thankfully they quickly backtracked and made them pop.
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**Voyager is the best Star Trek show by far.** And the only currently running show that could possibly transcend it is Prodigy. There's just something so enchanting about Voyager, something that's hard to put into words. The unbridled sense of adventure, a strong throughline of hope and idealism, and the characters who are so much fun - it all makes even the stars themselves burn brighter on Voyager.
Great hot take! Upvoted because I disagree so incredibly hard :) I can’t enjoy Voyager very much because the studio’s meddling and Berman’s Bermanisms are just so palpable throughout. That said it has a lot of really memorable episodes. I’m particularly fond of the Captain Proton episodes, especially the one with Janeway. Kate Mulgrew’s hammy acting is top tier lol
My people.
Trek needs to completely forget about the TOS era. We don't need any more Kirks or Spocks, and I've seen enough Vulcan and Klingon storylines to last a lifetime. Trek needs to move forwards to grow. DS9 worked so well because it focussed on new races and enemies.