A Star Trek Omnibus thread. Do any of the old series hold up. How are the new ones?

DS9 holds up so well that you get annoyed at penchant for ripping storylines from the headlines. Then you realise that it went off air in 1999.

TNG holds up really well, post the first 2 seasons and even those have some good episodes.

This.

When I first saw Lower Decks, my first thought was, “Man, The Orville really scared the shit out of someone over at Paramount…”

The majority of TNG holds up well, I still rewatch some scenes from time to time. Of course, there are some stinkers in there but I’m not going to rewatch the whole series from the beginning, only the episodes that inspired me in some way. Mainly, I rewatch it to get lessons in leadership from Captain Picard. A lot of fans complain about Wesley, but IMO Troi was no doubt the most useless and insult-to-your-intelligence character, what with her empathic “insights” that any 8-year old with common sense could figure out from contextual cues.

I watched some scenes of DS9 when I was a kid and the show was still on broadcast TV, but was put off by the more weighty nature of that show and always changed the channel shortly. I gave the series another chance as an adult, and binged through the whole thing last year. The show made a much bigger impression on me the second time through, now that as an adult I can approach the episodes with an more mature frame of mind and the ability to keep track of plot details over multiple episodes, and it became my favorite Star Trek series. Great character development (for some characters, at least), and some really emotionally powerful scenes. Would absolutely recommend this series if you have not begun on it.

Voyager was the one series I mainly followed as a kid, and I still view it through rose-colored glasses. Yes, looking back on it as an adult, I realize the lack of character development and writing inconsistencies make it a weaker series compared to the others, but 10-year old me thought the Borg and Species 8472 were the coolest things ever, and boy did Voyager not disappoint on that front. Explosions and assimilations aside, this series does contain its share of gems, and the Doctor remains my second favorite character after Picard.

I initially tried going the TOS episodes in sequential order, but I found that a lot of them are plagued by campy writing, hamfisted acting, jarring sound effects, and a glacial pacing that nearly put me to sleep at moments. I eventually searched for a Reddit guide on the “essential” episodes to watch to understand the rest of the Star Trek lore, and just watched those instead, skipping over the rest.

I only made it through 2 episodes of Lower Decks before I decided Mariner’s rapid-fire voice and in-your-face behavior was too grating for me and stopped.

Picard was a train wreck, throwing out basically everything that made TNG special (imagine the JJ Abrams films transplanted to TV, but made worse somehow), and I was especially upset at how they neutered the character of Picard himself, since him in TNG was the biggest influence on my moral compass today.

Haven’t watched Enterprise yet, may yet do so in the future, but not anytime soon. Have no plans of ever watching Discovery. Watched one JJ Abrams Trek movie and immediately threw in the towel on the newer movies.

Picard is a lot better when you binge watch it, as I did on rewatch. I think that’s one of the problems with Kurtzman Trek, it’s made by streaming service and shot as a series which would see a whole season drop, but it is “broadcast” weekly.

Binging might help a bit, but only in the sense of ripping the band-aid off quickly. I’ll admit the first episode of Picard was actually somewhat ok, but the experience of waiting a week for each episode, each time in wide-eyed and wistful hope that the next episode will right the ship, only to be let down badly nine times in a row (with the possible exception of Nepenthe), left a terrible taste in my mouth that I’m not eager to repeat anytime soon.

And with that being said, I’ll probably repeat my same stupid mistakes when Season 2 comes out, drawn like a moth to the flame.

Must … resist … watching

I thought “Someone’s seen Final Space

The H&I cable channel has been cycling through all the older Trek series for years and when DS9 started again several weeks ago, I decided to watch it for I think the 4th time. At some point I’ve re-watched all the others at least once and think DS9 holds up better than the rest. I’ve always liked that it has an overarching story that has a distinct beginning and ending and is pretty epic in scope with the themes of occupation, war, empire and religion. I like that the characters grow and change over the years as a result of their experiences and decisions. It can be funny like in the episode where the crew interacts with TOS and the tribbles and heartbreaking as in Nog’s story arc when he loses his leg in the war. I imagine I’ll re-watch it every few years.

I’ve been rewatching DS9. It continues to hold up and in many ways has matured the best of any Trek series.

Discovery and Picard are both very bad. Discovery is just stupid bad and Picard is an outright disaster.

I have not watched Lower Decks.

If you’re on the fence about TNG, the Honest Trailer is surprisingly informative. And hilarious of course.

I loved the show dearly when it aired. It’s mostly bad, but it’s so sweet. My partner and I re-watch constantly just to mock all the characters MST3K-style.

I’ll never understand the hate for all the new Treks coming out. I mean, in order for a franchise to succeed, it has to evolve.

I have no problem with bringing new ideas to Trek. The problem with the new series wasn’t so much the ideas - it was the execution. They were, for the most part, badly written, badly plotted and in some cases, badly acted. There hasn’t been a new Trek story in the past 20 years that couldn’t have been amazing if only if the people behind them were competent.

Yeah, this. I gave Discovery more than a fair shot. It had a lot of potential in the early days, but it’s just so godawfully written I couldn’t stand it.

They pretty much just tell you, “This is the character you’re supposed to be emotionally committed to, for our ‘story’ to work”, without actually giving us any reason to actually like the people involved. It was so bad, that they had one “major character” die in what was supposed to be a great tragic self-sacrifice. Every character in the story acted like that was the case, but I was literally sitting there saying, “Who was that again? Are they really that important to the show that I’m supposed to be as worked up as the crew is over their death?” Hell, if they hadn’t spent half that show repeating the character’s name, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you their name, they were that much of a background character.

Just stupid, transparent efforts at creating “emotional drama”, which fall completely flat because there’s no reason for the viewer to give a crap about it.

I don’t know anyone who loves Trek and wants it to rise again and thrive as much as I do. I will choose Trek over pretty much every other genre franchise, given an either-or ultimatum. I was thrilled at the announcement of Discovery and tuned in with great excitement… and then it sucked. I was less excited for Picard because I felt burned by Discovery, but I gave it a shot… and it sucked worse.

And this isn’t about a resistance to evolution. I have a detailed pitch for a new Trek series ready to go for anyone at CBS-Viacom who wants to listen. My idea gleefully tears down every status quo in sight, and risks infuriating the stodgy “just give me more of the same” fanbase, but I would radically revamp the story world in knowing and deliberate service to the underlying ethos of Trek.

I don’t reject the new Treks because they’re different. I reject them because they’re incompetent, jettisoning the emotional and intellectual core of the franchise in an attempt to chase the narrative aesthetic of other successful franchises and failing even at that.

Not that I have strong feelings or anything.

And I think it’s that last bit that is the most telling: “chase the narrative aesthetic of other successful franchises.” A lot of modern Trek tries to be something else with Trek setting bolted onto it. And it always shows the seams.

FWIW - I kinda liked the first of the Star Trek movie reboots. It felt respectful enough even with (sigh) the damn time travel / reboot universe trope. It was fun, it had great casting of characters that felt like the OG, but was primed to be able to do it’s own thing.

And then Into Darkness… We have to be GrimDark, the Federation has to toss it’s morals for military superiority, we have to split the crew into disfunctional units, we have to have Khan that isn’t Khan and so forth. It jettisoned a lot of Trek to be an action movie. And Beyond was worse.

Discovery and Picard both feel that the current vogue of dark and gritty are still the winning routes. It’s like how the DCU was determined to filter all the bright primary colors out, and to make every character as tormented as possible. Sure, Batman, Superman, and Trek have their dramatic, dark or tragic moments - but they normally serve to highlight the heroics of the characters/story, not to be an end in and of themselves.

I went to Star Trek convention with Leonard Nimoy as the guest of honor and here’s what he had to say. “The episodes we did thirty years ago that were bad are still bad today. The episodes we did that were good are still good today.” “Sub Rosa” was a bad TNG episode in 1994 and it’s a bad episode today. Do they hold up? Well, no, not entirely because most of them are rather dated. TNG went off the air 27 years ago which is more time than passed between the end of TOS in 1969 and the beginning of TNG in 1987. So everything from acting style to special effects and even plots are different now and audience expectations have also changed.

If I were to recommend anyone watch TOS, I’d just have them watch some of the best ones from each season. I don’t know if I’d bother with the series as a whole unless someone had a keen interest in older television programs.

There’s plenty of room for Star Trek to evolve in a GOOD way. But for some inexplicable reason, all the producers and showrunners and executives seem to think that the entire Federation ended with Voyager returning to Earth.

Certainly, the episodes don’t have to be watched in any particular order (I saw them in whatever order they came on in syndication), so you might as well start with a few of the more highly-regarded ones, and keep watching as long as it holds your interest.

One thing TOS still has going for it is the music, it can’t think of any memorable music from the other shows. I like the designs for starfleet ships on Discovery especially the new Enterprise!