Upham, resistance is futile. Prepare to be assimilated.
I see him doing a weird cross between Peter Lorre and Dr. Smith - “Oooo, the pain, Tuvok, I sense great pain, heh heh heh!”
Esprix
Upham, it’s ok. You and me can go sit in the Grateful Dead-liking corner. I’m not a Deadhead by any means, but I do like them a lot. It’s the smelly hippie counterculture I don’t like. 
But, according to this site, Upham is wrong. So, go fig.
Uhm, Rasa as much as i’d like to be sitting in a corner with you…
I am smelly hippie counterculture.
And, i would like to point out, i was later proven to be right! So there!
I’d also like to make it known that that is a REALLY old picture
I’ll take a crack at the OP, even though I’m just a fan and not a hard-core Trekkie. I think the main appeal lies in presenting the future as a place many people would wish it to be while still keeping it in the realm of plausibility (work with me here, OK?). I meant that mainly in social terms - in Roddenberry’s version of the future, humanity has struggled and overcome its racial and economic strife for the most part. The show also appeals to the common wish to believe we’re not alone - that we can actually visit and communicate with and socialize with the other sentient species. There’s no dependence on magic or divine intervention (except if you look closely at the physics), just extrapolations of our current situation and aptitudes.
That’s certainly not to say there are no individual episodes, or movies, that are tedious boilerplate plots with new settings, it’s just that the setting itself is an attractive place, all the more attractive for being conceivably possible.
Star Trek lost me with TNG & DS9 for the same reasons it found drewbert: too much super-intense character developement. It got to the point where you were wondering who’s child Deanna* Troy was carrying, and whether or not it would have webbed toes when it was born. Those spinoffs became night time soaps as far as I am concerned. The only thing missing was the obligatory bikini episode during sweeps week. Or maybe I just missed that episode. Just too melodramatic for me.
Now Voyager brought back some of the “way out there” exploration and sense of hopelessness that TOS had. The thing I still managed to hate even in Voyager is the lack of imagination with aliens. Need a mysterious new race of bad guys? Just glue a piece of foam rubber to the bridge of his/her/it’s nose and viola! Instant scary new bad guy. If you happened to be out of prosthetic nose bridges, just give them a funny hairdo & glue some bumps to her forehead. And for my money, the Ferengi were the absolute worst attempt at alien creation in the history of televison, and I include Plan 9 From Outer Space in that statement. Every time I look at one, I can’t help but think of The Flying Nun.
What? Yes I’ve taken my medication today. Shut up already & listen!
In TNG & DS9 you don’t see the wonderful array of imaginative boogeymen that you do in TOS, for example the gaseous cloud in Obsession, the radioactive looking Tholian species in The tholian Web, the Horta in The Devil in the Dark, the flying parasites in Operation: Annihilate!, the Ghostly Angel/Lawyer in And The Children Shall Lead, The Salt Vampire in The Man Trap, the butt-headed aliens (Talosians) in The Menangerie, the Vians in The Empath, the biggest amoeba in the universe in The Immunity Syndrome, the companion in Metamorphosis, the gorn in Arena, Ballock in The Corbomite Maneuver, the evil energy alien in Day of the Dove, the providers in The Gamsters of Triskellion, the rock creature in The Savage Curtain, that thing, whatever it was, in Specter of the Gun, and more that don’t come to mind right now.
Even better, they weren’t so hard up for ideas for new bugaboos that they had to bring the old ones back time & again (save the Klingons** & Romulans), as is common in the more recent spinoffs.
What’s that? What do you mean by “you didn’t know we were allowed to watch TV in mental institutions”? Oh nevermind.
And when the trouble wasn’t with the tribbles, it was with some made-made mechanical beastie as Scottie would say, such as The Changeling, The Apple, Dagger of the Mind, That Which Survives, The Ultimate Computer, and my personal fave, the giant carrot that ate the universe in The Doomsday Machine.
And the stories themselves were strong enough to stand up on their own merits even when they resorted to making aliens by painting actor Frank Gorshin (Batman’s Riddler) half black & white in Let That Be Your Last Battlefield, a statement of modern day racism that I wouldn’t come to understand the deep significance of until I was in my early 20s.
What? Oh be quiet, I’m not even wearing a pocket protector!
Another powerful element missing from the spinoffs is the musical score. I’m sure there is music of some kind behind the climactic scenes in DS9 or TNG, but I can’t even begin to remember what it sounded like. On the other hand, the brilliant brass overtures that play when the carrot is attacking us in The Doomsday Machine still play in my head (only when I want them to- I’m not that hopeless) & still make that scene riveting to this day. And how about the tender music in The Empath, soft violins & trumpets that bring the viewer into an empathic bond with the delicate Gem as she slowly & voluntarily gives up her own life to save our hero by taking all of his life threatening ailments as her own. What about those wierd creepy strings whenever we got mooned by the Talosians in The Menagerie? I’m getting chills now just thinking about them & that music.
Well anyway you see where I’m going with this. What? You don’t? Well I could go on with more examples of -
Oh you have to go home now? Okay then. See ya tomorrow.
[sub]*No I don’t know how to spell it, sue me.
**Yes, the ones around Uranus.[/sub]
Hoplesness for the crew, not for the series. I just know somebody would have chimed in with a smart remark there.
…god… you all are such fucking dorks!
Whereas… I am not a fucking dork.
see the difference?
Agree with this (well, I don’t like ST-V, and do like sports in general and women…) , and it’s well said.
I like Star Trek (really, only the Original Series, though Next Generation wasn’t too bad. The others I couldn’t get into).
I get sports.
I get women, I just don’t GET women. 
So, you’re just a dork…no need to be so bitter about missing the other bit.
[sub][sup](C’mon, SOMEONE hadta say it…)[/sup][/sub]
Thats what I meant to say… didnt I say that? “I’m a non-fucking dork.” Maybe I minced words. …wait a second… was I trying to overcompensate for my lackings again!!!
I used to love Star Trek. Over the years I started to like it less and less until I finally discovered I hated it. Kinda like that girl you used to date and just loved and after you broke up you hate her! Yes I’m bitter about the loss of my love, Star Trek.
The most alien beings in Star Trek are the humans. I just don’t get them. They all appear to be goody goody with very few vices. There are very few signifigant social problems and I can only assume this is why all the characters are one dimesional. Seriously, take Picard or Janeway from season 1 and they’re almost totally interchangable with their characters from season 5. Boring.
Which epsisode was it that Picard claimed that Starfleet was not a “military organization?” Maybe it was the episode with Mark Twain in it. I remember that line made be bust a gut. We’re talking about an organization with ranks, weapons capable of devastating planets, responsible for the defense of the Federation, and has a penchant for attempted coups when they don’t like the way hte government is run. They sure as hell sound like a military organization to me.
I’m an atheist but it always bothered me that there were no christians or jews around. Spirituality is either represented in some alien religion, native american spirituality, or via some phenomenon that can’t be explained. I suppose its possible that there would be no Christians or Jews in the future since some religions do come to dead ends. I just always found it to be a glaring omission.
Next we’ll move on to money. Does it exist or not? Kirk says they don’t use money in ST 4 but in ST Generations he says that he should never have sold his house. I suppose maybe they use some form of credits and he really meant to say that they didn’t use cash.
Stupid treaties. They made a treaty with the Romulans promising not to develop cloaking technology. What a completely idiotic plot device for the writers to come up with. Later in DS9 they wanted to give the Defiant a cloaking device so they had to come up with a Romulan liason officer to operate the device. Can anyone say another lame plot device? She didn’t last for many episodes before they decided to get rid of her and just pretend like the treaty never happened.
I’ll admit that looking back there are episodes that I still remember fondly and I think they were well written. Except that Voyager only had one episode which I considered to be any good…man that show sucks rocks.
Marc
Take me to your dealer. meep meep.
Meep Meep? That’s not Star Trek, that’s Roadrunner. Meep Meep!
Here is my unsolicited opinion on Star Trek:
The future is either going to end up in one of 2 ways - the way it is in Star Trek or the way it is in Mad Max films. I would personally rather live on a starship than have to scrounge around the desert and fight others for gasoline and water. So, i watch it for pointers on what I would like future society to be like. The stories and secondary to the tools and gadgets they get to play with.
I was a very big fan of the original series (TOS) and the first movies (espwecially the even numbered ones), but there hasn’t been an episode of any of the newer series I’d want to watch over again.
I think the difference is in the science fiction content and the writing. Look at the credits on TOS and you’ll see it’s full of scripts written by or inspired by established sf authors – Harlan Ellison, Robert Bloch, Theodore Sturgeon, Norman Spinrad, Fredric Brown. David Gerrold wasn’t a “name” before the series, but became one during its run. Even the animated series used established authors (Gerrold again, Larry Niven) and the proposed second TV series that never was had script proposals by noted authors.
But I can’t name a single Next Generation or Deep Space Nine or Voyager episode by an author previously noted for sf. All of the plots seem to be pureed and blended together in the same bland fashion. Even with Rodenberry re-writing shows to beat the band I think enough originality from each writer bled through to keep it interesting. The newer franchises have much better effects and some genuinely interesting characters, but the stories haven’t been able to hold my interest.
As regards the OP, a lot of what has already been said in this thread is true–many many Trek fans don’t like Voyager.
I don’t praticularly like it, but currently in my market it’s the only Trek in town. In addition to all the concerns already noted, one of the problems is that it tries to maintain a moral high ground that was lost in the much more interesting and well written Deep Space Nine. In DS9 we had a Starfleet captain conspiring with a Cardassian exile to get the Romulans into a war they wanted no part of–and the captain was willing to lie and kill to do so. We had enemies who were three-dimensional and whose motivations we could understand. We had Section 31–the secret branch of Starfleet that seems to take its cues from the CIA and NSA of today, with a touch of the School of the Americas thrown in. In other words, it was realistic. On the other hand, Voyager has a crew made up of unreconstructed terrorists and their Starfleet enemies, and yet there is none of that realism, and certainly no sense (beyond the token one episode a season) that half the crew originally broke with Starfleet because they thought the Feds were a little too goody-goody for the brave new galaxy. None of the enemies have any depth. It’s a bad, bad show.
And still I watch. I’m a huge fan of the Cardassians, who are probably the only interesting Trek race to be created in the past 10 years. Whereas they had some nuances in TNG and especially DS9, in Voyager they’re pretty convenient one-dimensional bad guys, but they’re still fun to watch (Seska was the only cool member of the Voyager crew besides Suder, and they killed her off too).
Voyager has too many easy answers and too little depth. I’m waiting for it to be over so my local affiliate will start the run of DS9 again.
And I agree that the Universal Translator is just a little too perfect, but I suppose it would be hard to have a chow without it (barring subtitles).
Well, what are you comparing it to? Maybe the ST series are not all great, but they sure hold their own against most other family dramas on TV (at least non-cable which is the limit of my experience.) I remember hearing the original series called “Wagon Train to the Stars”. And I am amused when people dis it saying they don’t like SciFi. It is irrelevant that it takes place in space. I consider it essentially the same as Gunsmoke, or Bonanza. What other network dramas can you look forward to watching with your young children? And, both the children and the adults can each enjoy it.
With ST, you have generally decent writing and directing (uneven, depending on who does a particular show), character development over a course of seasons, and in some instances, different shows, and decent production values.
Yeah, some folk probably put too much effort into ST. But I can imagine some neanderthals suggesting that some folk spend too much time hanging around message boards!
And Esprix, how could you have missed the fact that Gene Roddenberry was a Unitarian! If you think about it, there is a strong UU element to many of the storylines. We will have to take away your flaming chalice (or would that be your flaming flaming chalice?)