I liked older Star Trek for these reasons. Will I like newer Trek?

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21

I watched the first few episodes of Picard and couldn’t get into it at the time. Then someone suggested skipping straight to Season 3. This is a very reasonable thing to do; you don’t really need to have seen the first two seasons to follow it, and it’s what I wanted the series to be from the start. I eventually went back and enjoyed the first two seasons, but the third is the best by far.

Strange New Worlds is the best Trek since Next Generation. It might be objectively better, but I am utterly incapable of being objective so I’ll never know.

22

Yeah, I just found Discovery annoying. A lot of the action was just about whatever emotional crisis one of the characters was experiencing at this particular moment; the rest of it was pretty much:

1: We need to do the thing!
2: But we can’t do that thing! It’s simply impossible to do the thing! There is no way to do the thing.
1: But we MUST DO THE THING!
2: OK. We will do the thing.

23

I read a ST novel like that (Black Fire) that did it so poorly it turned me off reading ST Novels unless they come highly recommended.

(yes, they succeeded in doing the thing. Yawn. Must not have been that impossible after all…)

24

I tend to be much more forgiving than fans that love a show so much that they hate the show. I enjoyed Picard. It had flaws (season 1: the Romulans were right, season 2: using the same actors for different characters is dumb) but still enjoyable. Stewart is still very Picard. I’m slowly working my way through all the Trek. I decided it’s my walk on the treadmill watch.

25

I persevered and watched all of Discovery. It wasn’t easy in the end.

But I really couldn’t stand Picard. FTR, not a big fan of Next Gen anyway.

26

You’ll have to wacth a few and form your own opinion. Me and my wife, I think we just kinda watched enough ST that we burned ourselves out. We haven’t enjoyed any of the new shows, and even when we’ve rewatched the old shows, we’ve generally enjoyed them less than we remembered.

Discovery - I think we made it 1 season, maybe part of the second. Who would’ve thought a show could have too much Klingons? Not sure what our specific issues were, but just didn’t grab us enough to keep watching.

Picard. Watched S1 - maybe S2. I think my wife would watch S3, but I’ve not been interested to cue it up.

Below Decks - we bailed after the uber-violent ep1. Folk say it gets much better after, so consider that.

The movies are pretty much OK. Just quick, disposable eye-candy. Tho we watched (and rewatched) ToS, Next Gen, DS9, Voyager, Enterprise, we never got into memorizing and comparing the minutiae and continuity. Few of the earlier series/movies really held up upon rewatching in our opinions. Like I said, our limited enjoyment in rewatching the old shows, and our limited enjoyment of what new ones we watched, has kept us from even trying SNW.

And, yeah, Orville is a hoot.

Basically, I sorta feel we just our lifetime fill of things ST. Same for Star Wars. Not to yuck anyone else’s yum. Just that we’ve had our fill.

27

I was prepared to dislike SNW, but was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it and the rest of the first season. They managed to present a future where humanity had progressed but wasn’t smarmy about it like they were in TNG.

28

Huh. I was expecting that, as soon as I brought up Prodigy, there would be at least some post saying “OH, yeah, that one’s good, too.” Or even the opposite, with people explaining why they didn’t like it.

Because every Star Trek reviewer I watch goes on about how unexpectedly great Star Trek Prodigy is. They disagree on the rest of nuTrek (except Strange New Worlds), but they all seem to love it.

Heck, I’m more confident in Prodigy than I am the first few episodes of Lower Decks. Those first couple of episodes feel like Rick and Morty in Star Trek. It takes them a few episodes to find their footing.

@FlikTheBlue: don’t turn it off early if the humor of the first 2-3 episodes of Lower Decks doesn’t hit right. It takes them a bit to find the balance with Mariner.

And, yes, the violence of Episode 1 is not typical.

29

That’s why I didn’t like TNG much, outside of a few excellent episodes. The constant moralizing was annoying. The Betazoids were annoying. Having children on a ship ‘because we’ve outgrown the military’ was stupid - especially since the ship did get in battles and was in danger pretty much all the time.

They always talked about how enlightened they were and better than those old Earth primitives from the 20th century with their ‘money’ and wars and stuff, yet behaved exactly like them when not preening about how they didn’t.

And the show was SO 80’s. It’s more dated than TOS in some ways.

30

And, really well spoofed on Lower Decks.

Lower Decks has gotten me to watch various episodes in the other series, because I didn’t get some of the references.

31

This is a big part of why The Orville is so much fun – they have released themselves from the exhausting moral superiority of TNG, and it’s a breath of fresh air.

32

I mean, I know the whole thing about overcoming the apparently impossible is a common theme in ST, and indeed SF in general, it’s just that it seemed like Discovery often did it all in one scene, which was just an argument about doing the thing.

33

I might have to check that one out, then. I did indeed skip it because it was a “kid’s show”, so I just assumed I wouldn’t like it.

34

It was also hard to watch, only some of the episodes were on Paramount+ for whatever reason.

Now that it is on Netflix, I expect to try it eventually.

35

As a recent convert to the Trek world, here are my two cents. Having watched TNG off and on throughout university, my impression of Star Trek was pretty much stuck in the 90s, all stiff posture, squeaky-clean sets and hokey syndicated dialogue. A couple of summers ago I gave Discovery a try, for no better reason than I’m a big fan of Michelle Yeoh. I instantly fell in love with the show, for the amazing performances and the astonishing production design and direction. I went and revisited all of TOS and TNG, while also taking in the new arrivals as they came out. DISCO has, I’ll admit, wobbled for me. The plotting got a bit dense, and once the ship got sent several thousands of years into the future, and never came back, I became a bit less engaged. I can still enjoy it from a visual standpoint, and the performances continue to be top-notch (David Cronenberg, in particular, gives Emmy-worthy monologues whenever he steps onscreen). My favorite season was the second, and no coincidence, that was they year they brought in Spock, and Pike and Number One. Which lead to…

Strange New Worlds is the nearly-perfect update to the spirit of the original show. It’s wholly episodic, so no season-length arcs. The actors are dynamite, and it’s genuinely funny and inspiring. I liked the first season better than the second, but I’m still 100% on board. Having watched TOS fairly recently, I’m struggling with allowing myself to think of any of this as canon, both in terms of technology and also chronology of the history of the future. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a third timeline. My favorite episode so far has been the crossover with…

Lower Decks. Supposedly taking place just after the final season of TNG, and canonical, I’m loving it to death, very much my kind of humour. Not much to say beyond that: as a half-hour show, it’s much more easy to digest, a quick hit-and-git. And even if you’re not an avowed Trekker, if you appreciate smart comedy and science fiction, you should be good to go.

I finally worked through all three seasons of Picard this winter. Absolutely loved the first season, the second was about 85% for me, and the third was very wobbly but with heartbreakingly effective bits of fanservice stirred in, so it was a mixed bag. My fan friends had told me that season three was the best of them all so I guess I need to get new friends…I mean, your mileage may vary.

(I never tried Prodigy)

To me, we’re in a golden age of Trek: there’s a show for every taste. You can let yourself be drawn into the convoluted timelines and Russian-novel-complex history of the Federation, you can try to keep “Noonian Soong” and “Noonian Singh” straight, or you can just go with it.

36

It didn’t occur to me to try and describe Prodigy. But I had a bit of fun figuring out how to do so, so I’ll give what I consider the premise.

A ragtag group of different species from a mining slave colony in the Delta quadrant uncover a buried Starfleet ship. With the help of the Universal Translator allowing them to work together for the first time, they wind up using the ship to escape. However, the leader of the mining colony has been looking for that ship the whole time, and had plans for it, and so goes after them–and after his daughter who escaped with them.

Luckily for them, this isn’t some old ship as you might expect. It’s a new prototype, with a new propulsion system. And it includes a holographic assistant who mistakes the protagonists for cadets (and has had her memories tampered with). They thus are forced to act like a Federation crew, and over time learn more about the Federation, and eventually decide to try and go back to them. But first they want to show they are worthy of being in Starfleet, and not just some thieves. And then later there are more reasons they can’t return right away.

Meanwhile, the Federation is also searching for their prototype that they lost contact with in Delta Quadrant, and had just finally made it out there themselves. But only with one ship—led by Rear Admiral Janeway, searching for an old friend.

37

Nitpick: not right after - it takes place a few years after the end of Voyager, so maybe 10 years after the end of TNG.

(Checking Memory Alpha - yep, I’m right. TNG ends in 2370, and Season 1 of LD takes place in 2380).

38

Stylistically, I thought Prodigy had more in common with Star Wars than Star Trek. It felt like some kind of crossover.

39

I agree very much with the general consensus. Discovery and Picard did not not do much for me at all- both felt like kind of a slog. But Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks are both a lot of fun.

This latest season of SNW had a LD crossover episode that I just found delightful (not really a spoiler, but I think it’s more fun if you find out by watching the ep).

40

Diana Muldaur, Mark Leonard! call for you!